Palace: Respondents too few to say Arroyo is most corrupt

Malacañang shrugged off Wednesday survey findings that Filipinos perceive Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to be the most corrupt president in Philippine history, saying the study respondents were too few to determine the true sentiments of the entire country. Presidential Spokesman Ignacio Bunye said corruption was an "endemic" problem to Philippine governance, an issue which he said had affected past administrations as well. He said there were many factors which could have affected the answers of the 1,200 respondents of the Pulse Asia survey from October 20 to 31. For one thing, Bunye said, there were too few respondents. "So 1,200 out of 84 million Filipinos? So 'yan po ay napakaliit na bahagdan ng ating mga kababayan (So that is a very small percentage of our countrymen)," Bunye told dzBB radio. He added that responses depend on the timing and area where the study was conducted, thus it was "possible that the results were skewed and not balanced." Pulse Asia found, based on its survey findings, that 42 percent of Filipinos perceived Mrs Arroyo to be the "most corrupt" chief executive in the history of the Philippines since the Marcos administration. Former President Corazon Aquino was perceived to be the least corrupt with only 1 percent of respondents thinking that she engaged in shady deals during her term. The survey had an error margin of plus or minus 6 percent. Bunye said in Filipino that, "And it would depend on how the questions were asked. If the questions were leading questions, then the answers were possibly suited (akma) to the leading question." "We are not saying that the survey is biased. What we are just saying is that there are these possibilities especially if out of 84 million Filipinos only 1,200 people were asked," Bunye added. In terms of location, the perception of Mrs Arroyo as the most corrupt president prevailed in Metro Manila (50 percent), and in Luzon (50 percent). In terms of socio-economic class, 50 percent of respondents from the elite ABC Class and 43 percent from Class D thought that Mrs Arroyo was the most corrupt chief executive. However, in Mindanao (50 percent) and in Visayas (47 percent), the late strongman Ferdinand Marcos was the most corrupt leader. Class E also believed that Marcos was the most corrupt president. "This is a problem we are taking seriously. We are taking every step to combat corruption," Bunye said. He claimed that there had been "reforms" in the judicial branch of government, with the Sandiganbayan improving its rate of conviction from 12 percent to a "higher" range of "30 to 33 percent." Last September 12, the Sandiganbayan convicted Mrs Arroyo's predecessor former President Joseph Estrada to life imprisonment after finding him guilty of plunder. Mrs Arroyo pardoned Estrada one month later. Bunye also said the government has taken up computerization and electronic bidding, while running after smugglers and tax evaders. He took notice that anti-corruption consultant Tony Kwok, former head of Hong Kong's Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC), had been tapped to fight corruption in the Philippines. Kwok was hired in 2005. Bunye said that while it took Kwok seven years to stop corruption in Hong Kong, Kwok said corruption can be licked in the Philippines in less than seven years. - GMANews.TV