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Noynoy's Problem

EDITORIAL
The Daily Tribune
February 6, 2010


From the day Sen. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino was pushed by a faction of the Liberal Party, along with the Aquino-Cojuangco family members, to become their standard bearer, they all banked on the Cory euphoria brought about by the death of Cory Aquino who was being portrayed by the yellow media as a saint, to get Noynoy the presidency and the Cory crowd, regained power and influence.

It was this euphoria that they believed would carry Noynoy through, on which his campaign was grounded.

Thus it was that Aquino and his LPs copied, to the letter, the Cory campaign of 1985 — the fight between “good and evil” along with the vow of going after the Marcoses and bringing back the stolen wealth. There was too the same line of the LPs which was copied from the 1986 Cory campaign: Experience vs inexperienced, with claims that Cory had no experience in stealing and cheating.

Early enough, it was pointed out by crtics that no euphoria can ever last long, and that it was a mistake for Noynoy to bank on this Cory campaign of good vs evil and the claimed “legacy” of his mother, along with the “genes” do it for the presidency spiel.

But Noynoy and his image makers, as well as the yellow media, ignored these warnings, basking in his high survey ratings, while refusing to frontally face the many issues hounding him, such as his lack of experience, and an almost blank legislative record, along with the Hacienda Luisita issues.

Even as his survey ratings were dipping steadily, Noynoy and his handlers, now filled with hubris, went on with their campaign spiel, saying that even with the survey dip, his margin was still very wide and that he was definitely going to be the next president of the republic. He was still numero uno, they crowed.

The hubris showed when, in a debate, a presidential candidate questioned Aquino’s inexperience and lackluster legislative record, and Aquino snapped at the bet, saying that he does not have to respond to questions coming from a survey cellar-dweller.

Again, he displayed hubris when he arrogantly warned any associate high court justice against accepting the appointment of chief justice by Gloria Arroyo, and further warned that he may be fired from the high court, which showed that he truly and with arrogance, believed it will be him who will be appointing the next chief justice.

But that really is the trouble in relying on these pre-presidential poll surveys, all of which are highly inaccurate in gauging the true public pulse, mainly because a) these survey firms are into massive trending in their surveys, aspiring to take the place of the primaries-style of the United States in voters choosing whom they want as their party’s candidate; and b) even as these so-called “respected and independent” survey firms will never admit it, despite the glaring proof of their variances in survey numbers for candidates on the same given days of surveying, both in regional counts and national averages, some of their field workers have been corrupted, and do engage in the dagdag-bawas scheme in survey votes for a fee, which is also why these so-called survey analysts cannot quite explain satisfactorily the reason behind the huge drops in one bet, and the huge increases in the other, despite what the issues in the media were at that specific time the surveys were conducted.

In the case of Noynoy, it may be a bit too late for him and his campaign handlers to switch spiel gears, after six months of banking on his parents’ legacy and the moral ascendancy they claim to have, which incidentally, turns a lot of people off. For some six months, they fashioned Noynoy as Cory and Ninoy’s son, as though this was enough justification for him to become president.

He never bothered to become his own man, nor did he respond to the issues that have been leveled against him for months, perhaps still believing in the magic of survey ratings and the forever euphoria to bring him the presidency.

It may prove difficult for Noynoy, now that euphoria has gone, to start standing on his own two feet.

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