CRIMINALIZE FRAUDULENT POLLS SURVEYS

 Erle Frayne D. Argonza

 Poll experts are intellectual prostitutes. This is the most precise attribution we can give to the “experts” who conducted the poll surveys in this country, and probably in other countries as well. It is now turning out that they are experts in doctoring data and are in league with the criminal forgers at Recto Avenue in old Manila. 

As it now appears, poll surveys are not exactly meant to reflect the state of voters’ perception at the time they were conducted. The PulseAsia, for instance, is owned by Raffy Lopa, a Kamag-anak Inc. (blood relative) of Noynoy Aquino who is running as a presidential candidate for the Liberal Party.

 Can we expect fair game from the poll survey companies, notably the PulseAsia and Social Weather Stations? Now that it is becoming much clearer that the surveys rig public perception results to favor certain personalities and political blocs, we may rest assure of the result of the coming 2010 elections. 

We do wonder whether the research personnel of the said companies did conduct field work in the other regions of the country for data gathering. It is getting clearer that no such actual field works are done, the same field works largely concentrated in metropolitan Manila. 

The survey results are purely forged data. Being disinformative, the results are pure insidious LIES. 

It may be high time for the state to investigate dubious researches, with the maximum aim of criminalizing fraudulent research. The public better raise eyebrows whenever the SWS and PulseAsia publish results from hereon.  

Observably, commercial sex workers sell only their bodies for money, while intellectual prostitutes sell their souls to the highest bidders. Thus said, those intellectual prostitutes are as obnoxious as filthy swine. 

[Philippines, 03 May 2010.]

[See: IKONOKLAST: http://erleargonza.blogspot.com, UNLADTAU: https://unladtau.wordpress.com]

MANILA’S HUNGER PANGS

Erle Frayne Argonza

In a previous article about obesity, I already touched on the hunger issue. It is particularly interesting to study nutrition issues in Manila today, nutrition patterns render the Philippines among the ‘transitional populations’ that characterize emerging markets.

Needless to say, in a transitional population as defined in demographic theory, both problems of hunger and overweight co-exist, with obesity rising at faster paces than hunger. Depending on current circumstance, hunger could fluctuate from low to high. The difference between the two problems is that while hunger fluctuates or varies in occurrence, obesity steadily rises.

When I did an intensive study on fair trade & food security in 2005 for a national center entrusted with addressing fair trade & food matters, I did stumble upon the reports of the Social Weather Stations or SWS about hunger. I also got updated about under-nutrition problems reported by experts of the Food and Nutrition Research Institute or FNRI, which indicated very serious nutrition gaps among children and women, and those for fisherfolks too.

What surprises me till now is that food producers themselves, fisherfolks most especially, suffer from under-nutrition problems. Food producers are abundant with food resources, and so expectedly they should show the least signs of under-nutrition. But this isn’t the case, and in a very informative manner, our nutrition experts led by Dr. Cecilio Florencio have used satisfactory factor analysis to unlock the causes and correlates of the problem.

From the late 1990s till 2004, the hunger incidence fluctuated from 8% to 12%, going up and down as data indicated. However, from 2005 through mid-2008, the pattern shifted to the 12% to 16% range, which surely makes the problem alarming.

As early as 2005, I already raised the alarm bell for hunger, recommended policy measures and the launching of a Hunger Fund as executor of the hunger mission. Unfortunately, state officials were not in the mood to listen to such problems then, and it seems that the FNRI’s own alarm bells to the Office of the President and to the Legislative fell on deft ears. Only when economist Dr. Mahar Mangahas and the SWS experts began raising the alarm bells over media did government respond.

To my own dismay, government response has been re-active. Nary can one find a new, fresh solution to the problem. It’s the same old fogey ‘give-the-poor-porridge’ solution, the same solution that one offers to folks during wars and calamities when people have to line up for scarce food preparations. Porridge & food stumps remain, till these days, as the intervention tool of state.

How to solve hunger in the long run, which our very own nutrition experts are adept at but which continue to fall on deft ears among top state officials and our own people who refuse to change lifestyles, isn’t anywhere in the Presidents’ nor Congress’ list of strategic solutions to the problem.

Let our state officials be reminded of the last years of the monarchy in Old France. When asked for a solution to hunger, Marie Antonette replied “offer the poor cake.” Whether the cake or porridge solution leads to food security is no longer an issue in fact. One need not be reminded that the French monarchy then, too immersed in its own vanity as to be so out of touch with reality, was decapitated.

[Writ 28 July 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]