Surveys must be banned

Batas Mauricio

THERE should now be a prohibition against any survey firm, or any other company or entity for that matter, from conducting any political survey that purports to measure the preference of voters for any particular candidate in any forthcoming election.

The reason is that, surveys are now clearly manipulated to favor politicians and to give them an appearance of success or defeat, even when only a very, very tiny segment of the population was allegedly surveyed. The ultimate objective seems to be to condition the minds of our people, so that even when cheating is resorted to, it will still be acceptable.

This activity clearly subverts the Constitutional right of the Filipino people to suffrage, and to honest, orderly, and peaceful elections. Surveys in fact set aside Section 2, Art. V of the 1987 Constitution, which says: “The Congress shall provide a system for securing the secrecy and sanctity of the ballot…” As it is, surveys now replace the ballot as the ultimate gauge of our people’s choice.

Let me ask you: have you been asked to answer any question in any of the surveys that are supposed to be conducted by even the biggest-named survey firms? Have you even seen any of the “surveyors” visiting your place?

As far as I am concerned, I have not been made a participant in any survey asking who I wish to vote for, either for the position of president, vice president, senators, or for any other position. And, I have not seen any supposed “surveyors” anywhere in the Philippines either.

I have been granted by God with the ability to travel from Aparri in Cagayan, to Iligan City in Mindanao and many other places in between, and I always endeavored to ask the people from these places that I have visited whether they have been surveyed, in one way or another. The answer, 100% of the time, is, no, they had not been surveyed at all.

So, where are the survey firms basing their supposed “results”, naming this and that candidate as the “most preferred” or the “least preferred”? And then, who is, or who are, funding these firms to carry out their surveys? Is it not true that when a candidate does not have the money to be included in the survey, he is not mentioned at all?

For example, more than a year and a half ago, we already sort of prophesied that survey firms with connections with Malacanang will come out with surveys favoring a certain “presidentiable” as the 2016 election comes nearer.

The presidentiable is a perennial survey loser, as it were, and, even our own listeners have been saying there is no way he is going to be liked by the people. Yet, Malacanang’s relatives in the survey firm appear to be propping up the candidate now, with greatly surprising (and, to some, totally impossible) survey results. This is the kind of survey firms that we have in our midst.

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Sometime in the distant past, I received an email from one Mary Ann San Mateo, a Filipina who has been in the United States, exhorting everyone to live a life that matters. I was awed by the message in that email, and I am sharing it with you today.

Here is the email: “Live A Life That Matters––Ready or not, someday it will come to an end. There will be no more sunrises, no minutes, hours or days. All the things you collected, whether treasured or forgotten, will pass to someone else. Your wealth, fame and temporal power will shrivel to irrelevance.

“It will not matter what you owned or what you were owed. Your grudges, resentments, frustrations, and jealousies will finally disappear. So, too, your hopes, ambitions, plans, and to-do lists will expire.

“The wins and losses that once seemed so important will fade away. It won’t matter where you came from, or on what side of the tracks you lived, at the end. It won’t matter whether you were beautiful or brilliant.

“Even your gender and skin color will be irrelevant. So what will matter? How will the value of your days be measured? What will matter is not what you bought but what you built, not what you got but what you gave.

“What will matter is not your success, but your significance. What will matter is not what you learned, but what you taught. What will matter is every act of integrity, compassion, courage or sacrifice that enriched, empowered or encouraged others to emulate your example.

“What will matter is not your competence, but your character. What is important is not how many people you knew, but how many will feel a lasting loss when you’re gone. What will matter are not your memories, but the memories that live in those who loved you.

“What will matter is how long you will be remembered by whom and for what. Living a life that matters doesn’t happen by accident. It’s not a matter of circumstance but of choice. Choose to live a life that matters…”

Yes, and so I ask: what is a life that matters? I can think of only two things that can make life a life that matters: loving the Lord our God and Savior with all our heart, with all mind, with all our strength, and loving our fellowmen as we love ourselves. Do we have these kinds of love?