Comelec to compel pollsters to name survey financiers

MANILA, Philippines - The Commission on Elections (Comelec) will likely compel private pollsters Social Weather Stations (SWS) and Pulse Asia to disclose the financiers of their pre-election surveys.

Comelec Chairman Sixto Brillantes yesterday said the poll body may come up with a resolution to force SWS and Pulse Asia to divulge whether politicians were among their subscribers.

In a hearing at the Comelec office, Pulse Asia and SWS officials refused to identify subscribers who pay in order to get access to unpublished survey data.

“We will order them to disclose their subscribers. And if they do not, we will probably prosecute them for violation,” Brillantes said.

SWS legal counsel Albert Bacungan said they are not required by law to name their subscribers because they did not pay for the surveys.

Bacungan said the subscribers only paid a fee to “obtain access to certain data on non-commissioned questionnaire items.”

Pulse Asia president Ronald Holmes took the same position as SWS.

The hearing was called after United Nationalist Alliance (UNA) asked the Comelec to implement campaign rules and require those doing pre-election surveys to identify who commissioned them.

UNA’s move was in reaction to an SWS survey on voter’s preference topped by senatorial bets of Team PNoy last February.

Bacungan said the survey was conducted by SWS on its own.

“It was on SWS’s own account. It was not commissioned or paid for by anyone,” he said.

Brillantes said the Comelec should know if there were politicians or candidates who sponsored the surveys.

He added that payment for surveys must be declared by the candidates with the poll body as part of their campaign expenditures under Comelec Resolution 9615 and Republic Act 9006 or the Fair Elections Act.

The Comelec chief also expressed concern that surveys are becoming tools for candidates to influence voters.

“If they are not election-related, we won’t really care. Baka naman naluluto ang surveys kapag politicians ang nag-sponsor (Maybe surveys are fixed if politicians sponsored them),” Brillantes said.

‘Bishop happy Hontiveros low in surveys’

Meanwhile, retired Novaliches Bishop Teodoro Bacani yesterday said he is “happy” that Reproductive Health (RH) advocate Risa Hontiveros remains low in pre-election surveys.

Hontiveros has been nailed to the No. 18 spot based on SWS surveys conducted from August 2012 to February this year.

When asked if he was satisfied with Hontiveros’ standing in the surveys, the prelate told reporters: “Of course I am happy, but that is just my emotion. My happiness might not be the happiness of others.”

Bacani is the spiritual adviser of Mike Velarde’s El Shaddai, which earlier declared support for six senatorial bets who opposed the RH law. They were Team PNoy candidates former Las Piñas congresswoman Cynthia Villar, and Senators Aquilino Pimentel and Antonio Trillanes. Sen. Gregorio Honasan, San Juan Rep. Joseph Victor Ejercito and Zambales Rep. Mitos Magsaysay from the UNA  also got the backing of the Catholic group.

UNA senatorial bet Richard Gordon, meanwhile, said that surveys pre-condition the minds of the voters.

Speaking at a press conference in Bacolod Monday, Gordon said he does not have faith in people who conduct surveys for business.

“They ask me to pay a certain amount of money and if I don’t, I go down,” he said. “They don’t look at your service records, they look at the money you paid them.”

Gordon said he leaves his fate to the electorate. – With Evelyn Macairan, Danny Dangcalan