DESPITE big and grave allegations of kickbacks he supposedly pocketed from contracts awarded by Makati City where he served as mayor until Vice President Jejomar C. Binay remains the candidate to beat in the May 2016 presidential elections.
Or at least that is the freeze-frame picture as of the latest nationwide Ulat ng Bayan survey conducted by the creditable Pulse Asia Research, Inc. from Sept. 8 to 14, 2014.
The pollster said Binay continued to lead the presidential race with 31 percent of 1,200 respondents choosing him as their candidate. This is thrice more than the 10 percent to 13 score that four other individuals reported to be pining for the position, including the ruling Liberal Party’s frontrunner Manuel A. Roxas II.
Nine other supposed presidential hopefuls snared much lower scores.
Nearly one in three of the respondents listed Binay as their preferred candidate,
Roxas, Interior and Local Government secretary, got support from only 13 percent of the respondents.
On third slot is Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago, 11 percent, followed by impeached president and now Manila Mayor Joseph Estrada, 10 percent, and Senator Grace Poe, 10 percent, Pulse Asia reported.
The other public figures included in the pollster’s latest electoral probe each registered a negligible voter preference score of at most 5 percent. Only 2 percent of the respondents did not express support for any of the personalities.
Poe, however, emerged as the top choice for vice president, with 31 percent of respondents listing her as choice. She was followed by Senators Francis Escdero, 19 percent; Alan Peter Cayetano, 9 percent; Antonio Trillanes IV, 7 percent; and Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos Jr., 6 percent.
Pulse Asia noted that In the first half of September 2014, the news headlines were dominated by, among other developments, “the ongoing Senate investigation into the reported overpriced Makati City Hall Building II, with witnesses claiming, among other things, that the bidding for the said project was rigged to favor Hillmarc’s Construction Corporation and that Vice-President Jejomar C. Binay received kickbacks from various Makati City projects while serving as its local chief executive.”
At the same time, Albay Governor Joey Salceda proposed to impeach Vice- Binay due to the charges of corruption raised against him, but this was “rejected by politicians allied with and critical of the current national administration.”
Other issues that hogged the headlines during the period were the decision of the House of Representatives to junk three impeachment complaints against President Benigno S. Aquino III, and the suspension for 90 days of Senator Juan Ponce Enrile as a result of the suspension order that the Sandiganbayan had issued against Enrile in July 2014.
In addition, the period also saw calls for the resignation of Philippine National Police Director General Alan Purisima amid “the increasing number of crimes involving policemen and President Aquino’s expression of trust in the beleaguered police official”; Binay’s statement that he would want Philippine Long Distance Telephone (PLDT) Company Chairperson Manuel V. Pangilinan to be his running mate in May 2016; and talks of a second term for Aquino.
As in previous Pulse Asia survey, the 1,200 respondents consisted of representative adults 18 years old and above. The survey has a ± 3 percent error margin at the 95 percent confidence level.
Pulse Asia undertakes Ulat ng Bayan surveys on its own without any party singularly commissioning the research effort.