Manila bishop belittles survey on Corona

Manila Auxiliary Bishop Broderick Pabillo on Wednesday warned the public to be wary of surveys.

The warning followed the release by Pulse Asia on Tuesday of a survey on the ongoing impeachment trial of Chief Justice Renato Corona.

The survey conducted from February 26 to March 9 showed that of 1,200 respondents, 47 percent said Corona was guilty, 43 percent were undecided and 5 percent said he was innocent.

“Those kinds of surveys, I really don’t know how true they are that’s why we really don’t give them too much importance,” Pabillo told reporters in a chance interview at the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) office in Intramuros late Tuesday.

“Anyone can just conduct a survey and we won’t even know if what they are saying is true,” noted the bishop, who also chairs the CBCP National Secretariat for Social Action.

Pabillo advised the public to be discerning and not to be persuaded by results of surveys as if they were already the “truth.”

“Because it’s just one way of manipulating public opinion,” he said, adding that even the media had been showing bias in reporting the ongoing impeachment trial of Corona.

For the people to make a guided decision, the bishop advised them to just follow the live coverage of the impeachment trial on television rather than just relying on news that had already been processed.

“It’s different if you just follow the actual trial than just depend on what’s being said on the radio, TV or the newspapers,” Pabillo said.

But he admitted that he wasn’t following the impeachment trial because he didn’t believe in the process.

“It’s purely a political thing. It’s not being conducted for the sake of truth,” he added.

Originally posted at 07:20 pm | Wednesday, March 21,  2012