EDITORIAL - Useless surveys, unless...

There is a new survey, the latest in an extremely long-running series, that says President Arroyo continues to be very unpopular among Filipinos. Whoever is funding these surveys is throwing away good money.

You do not need a survey to find out if the president is still unpopular in this country. She is. Anyone who thinks she is not unpopular is hopelessly out of touch with reality. To keep on funding surveys to find out what people already know is therefore a waste of everything.

Unless, of course, the people who are funding such surveys have a motive in keeping the surveys running. That is because any constant reminder of the unpopularity of the president will consequently make every other presidential aspirant look a little bit better.

And this is what Filipinos should look out for and be wary against. People who promote their own interests at the expense of others are definitely worthless. They ride on the failures of others in the hope of glossing over their own inadequacies.

There used to be a presidential hopeful who did just that. Every word that came out of his mouth was something negative about the president, never mind if the president was not going to be his opponent.

This presidential hopeful, banking on the unpopularity of the president, apparently felt that by keeping up his tirades against her, he can keep the attention of the populace fixated on her shortcomings and not on his own failures.

Well, as things turned out, people knew better and his balloon never flew. Eventually, he was forced to settle for the vice presidency. His camp tried to sugarcoat it as a big sacrifice. The reality is that it was a graceful exit and a way to recoup some of the losses.

It would not be surprising if the people who keep funding these useless surveys would not fit the same mold as the example mentioned above. This is not to say he is the one. But people with the same frame of mind, and the same resources, would certainly be a likely suspect.