MARCOS JR. HAS BUILT HIS PRESIDENTIAL HOUSE ON THE SAND

 

“Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand. Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand.” – Edna St. Vincent Millay

A. SAND OF FALSEHOOD

“The best lies about me are the ones I told.” – Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lies comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.” – Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Samples of Fact-checked Claims:

1. PH was NOT the top country in Asia economically during the Marcos’ regime, nor ranked second to Japan.

2. Marcos Sr. did NOT have the highest bar score grade in PH history at 98.01%.

3. Marcos Sr. was NOT awarded by the Americans for fighting the Japanese during WW II.

4. Marcos Sr. was NOT accorded “the best president of all time” by the Guinness World Records, but for the “greatest robbery of a government” amounting to $5 billion to $10 billion.

5. Marcos Jr. did NOT graduate and obtain a Bachelor’s degree from Oxford, but a Special Diploma in Social Studies. Solita Collas-Monsod referred to it as “a consuelo de bobo for dropouts.”

6. Marcos’ years were NOT the “golden age”: The economy grew by an average rate of only 3.8% and inflation reached 50.3% in 1984 due to “Marcos’ pernicious policy of debt-driven growth ($500M debt grew 46 times to $26B) and crony capitalism.”

B. SAND OF BADNESS

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled [i.e. suckered] long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozled. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozled has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” – Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark.

Samples of Marcos’ Badness:

1. In 2003, the Supreme Court ruled that a total of US$658 million in Swiss bank accounts and foreign foundations owned by the Marcoses were unlawfully acquired.

2. In 2012, the Supreme Court ruled that the Marcoses used a dummy Panamanian corporation Arelma Inc. to manage and hide ill-gotten wealth worth US$3.37 million at Merrill Lynch Asset Management, forfeited in favor of PH govt.

3. In Sept 2021, the Sandiganbayan ordered Royal Trading Holding Co., Inc. to return the ill-gotten PH bank deposits of P96 million and $5.4 million, with a 12% annual interest the bank received from Marcos and his associates from 1974 to 1986.

4. Marcos Jr. failed to file his income taxes from 1982 to 1985, convicted both in the trial court and in the Court of Appeal (final and executory).

5. John Maxwell’s Leadership Law of Magnetism: Who You Are Is Who You Attract

(Taken from Joel Ruiz Butuyan PDI “Flea Market Of Ideas” column)

a) Joseph Estrada, convicted, P400 million plunder, Sandiganbayan, 2007

b) Gloria Arroyo, charged, P366 million plunder, acquitted by controversial SC decision

c) Ramon Revilla Jr., charged, P224 million, acquitted by controversial Sandiganbayan decision

d) Jinggoy Estrada, on trial, P183 million plunder

e) Juan Ponce Enrile, pending case, P172 million plunder

Birds of the same feather flock together.

C. SAND OF SURVEY FOLLY

“There are three types of lies – lies, damn lies, and statistics.” – Benjamin Disraeli

“[T]he emerging campaign for the coming elections is being compromised by… deliberate thought manipulation… misuse of certain polls and surveys that may not necessarily reflect and represent true voter preferences.” – FVR’s 23 former cabinet officials that endorsed VP Leni’s presidency

Alert: Campaign operatives have resorted to terms like “study” and “research” to sound like science instead of “polls” and “surveys” that have been discredited by their recent failures worldwide.

Let’s get back to basics. A pollster/survey conductor wants to figure out the opinions of the total voter population as to who they will vote for president if an election is held on the day of the survey. Next to an impossible goal. Solution: without having to ask every single voter the question, he will only ask a subset (sample) of the total voter population.

In PH typical election survey, the pollster will ask 3,600 people (sample survey respondents) the question and will presume their answers to represent the diversity of the total voter population of 63 million voters all over the country, spread throughout 42,046 barangays, and voting in 389,703 separate polling precincts. This implies that each respondent’s answer represents the answers of 17,500 voters (63 million/3,600).

The required “random sampling” should simulate this concrete illustration. Let’s say 1,500 customers (internet average figure) go to McDonald’s daily. The pollster assumes that the demographic information of the one survey respondent represents the demographic information of all the customers that go to McDonald’s for 11 (17,500 /1,500) days as to age, education, marital status, political affiliation, among others. The same assumption applies to each of the 3,599 respondents.

“Marcos Jr. tops the survey at 60%.” What does it mean? For the pollster, it means that 2,160 (i.e. 60% of 3,600) respondents voted for Marcos Jr. and it is presumed that a total of 37,800,000 (i.e. 60% of 63 million) voters all over the country will vote for Marcos Jr.

The term that’s taking shape at this point: Improbability, if not incredulous.

Moreover, we have still biases to consider which can alter the whole results: sampling bias, response & non-response biases, question order & information biases.

In PH, for example, the nonresponse bias has been induced by the EJK culture of fear. In the US, it’s social desirability bias: pro-Trump Evangelicals have shied away from his immorality scandal issue, thereby have stayed away from survey.

The use of cell phones diminishes participation in surveys due to the surge of telemarketing calls. Besides, many cell phone operating systems block incoming phone numbers or warn users from potential scammers, fraudsters, or spammers. Sensing intrusion on their time and privacy, people have steered clear of the surveys.

Mark Mellman who helped elect 30 US senators, 12 governors, and dozens of House members said, “Question can be asked. Answers will be given and transformed into numbers. It’s seductive; it looks like science. But we now know definitely that answers to questions about where people obtain their political information are so inaccurate as to be worthless.”

In the light of the recent polling and survey “black eye” worldwide, uncompromising critics have propounded:

1. Polling or survey is irrevocably broken

2. Pollsters and polling purveyors should be ignored

3. The polling industry is a wreck and should be blown up

Let me conclude this article with a Bible passage.

“But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.” (Matthew 7:26-27)

Would Marcos Jr.’s presidential house fall with a great crash? Let’s wait and see.