Palace ‘not alarmed’ by Duterte’s trust rating dip among poor

Malacañang is not bothered by the recent Pulse Asia survey showing a decrease in President Rodrigo Duterte’s trust rating among the poor.

“Not alarmed. I would say there was a dip, not an erosion,” Secretary Ernesto Abella, presidential spokesman, told reporters in a Palace briefing on Thursday.

In the March 2027 Pulse Asia survey, Duterte got an overall 76 percent trust rating. But his trust rating among the poor, or Class D, decreased. The President’s trust rating decreased by 7 percentage points from 83 percent in December 2016 to 76 percent in March 2017.

Still, Abella said: “As a whole, the President has actually positioned himself as a pro-poor leader.”

With a Abella at the Palace briefing was Chairman Terry Ridon of Presidential Commission for the Urban Poor, who admitted that the government’s war on drugs had affected the poor.

But Ridon said the administration’s war on drugs and its anti-poverty programs were “still a work in progress.”

“We have to be perfectly honest that much of the [Oplan] Tokhang is being undertaken in urban poor communities,” he said.

“I think with respect to the drug war, it is in the interest of the poor and urban poor to really see that criminality and the drug problem are resolved within their communities,” he added.

Abella backed Ridon’s statement, saying it was “in the interest of the poor that these things be resolved properly.”

Duterte enjoyed a landslide win with over 16 million votes in the May 2016 elections with his promise to stop illegal drugs, corruption and criminality nationwide.

The President, however, has received criticisms for his brutal war on drugs and the alleged extrajudicial killings taking place under his adminstration. /atm