Andaya: House to work ‘double time’ in passing bills after low approval rating

House Majority Leader Rolando Andaya Jr. on Tuesday said the lower approval rating of the chamber in September has pushed them to “work double time” in passing vital legislative measures for the public.

“The result of the latest Pulse Asia survey encourages us to work double time, moving us to exert more time and effort in marshalling vital legislative measures,” Andaya said in a statement.

But the chamber leader said the point of governance was “the courage to do what is right without giving consideration to how it will fare in the opinion polls.”

“But more than approval ratings, there are more important numbers in the dashboard of social and economic indicators which we must focus on like trade numbers, deficit, the consumer price index, job figures, farm output and many more,” he added.

A Pulse Asia survey, conducted from Sept, 1 to 7, revealed that the House got a lower approval rating of 56 percent from June’s 66 percent.

READ: Approval ratings of key gov’t institutions suffer drop in Pulse Asia survey

The survey was conducted barely two months after Speaker Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo took the House leadership from Davao del Norte 1st District Rep. Pantaleon Alvarez.

The same poll also showed that Arroyo has the lowest trust rating among all of the top officials in the government. Only 19 percent said they had “big trust” to her, while 43 percent said they had “small or no trust” and 37 percent were undecided.

Opposition lawmaker Magdalo Rep. Gary Alejano attributed this to the “reputation” of Arroyo when she was still President.

“Hindi natin kasi maiwasan nakakabit pa rin sa kanya ‘yung kanyang reputasyon when she was still President. I think it depends now on her performance on how to recover from that,” he said.

Corruption and human rights violation issues have consistently plagued Arroyo’s presidency.

Arroyo, in a statement, said her approval rating was “on an upswing with the level of distrust diminishing.”

She compared it with the Pulse Asia survey in March 2010 or three months before she left the presidency where she got an approval rating of 14 percent with 27 percent undecided and 59 percent disapproval.

Arroyo added that in the July 2010 Pulse Asia poll, she obtained a 16 percent approval rating with 22 percent undecided and 62 percent disapproval. /muf

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