Senate Pres. Manny Villar tops performance rating poll

Senate President Manuel Villar Jr. topped the Social Weather Stations survey on public satisfaction ratings that found 67 percent satisfied and 15 percent dissatisfied with his performance, followed by Vice President Noli de Castro, who obtained a 66 percent satisfaction rating with 18 percent dissatisfied.

Supreme Court Chief Justice Reynato Puno moved from the negative net ratings to the positive slot, with 33 percent saying they were satisfied with his performance while 30 percent expressed satisfaction, earning a net positive 2 percent in net satisfaction ratings.

Speaker Prospero Nograles, who has held the position for only two months, obtained a 24 percent satisfaction rating, with 35 percent expressing dissatisfaction with his performance.

De Castro’s latest net satisfaction rating of positive 47 is his highest as yet, although it has not reached the heights of the net satisfaction ratings obtained by then Vice Presidents Joseph Estrada and Gloria Arroyo had reached.

Estrada hit the high eighties in percentage points as vice president. Arroyo initially hit the high sixties in

percentage points as vice president. Arroyo initially hit the high sixties in percentage points but went lower than zero close to the end of Estrada’s presidency. Then Vice President Teofisto Guingona never went beyond 20 percent in net satisfaction rating and even going down to below zero, or negative ratings.

Villar’s latest net score of +53 is a little less than +59 last December, yet quite good compared to previous Senate Presidents, SWS said in is release.

Speaker Nograles’ net satisfaction rating of -12 is a very poor start as it is the lowest score among all Speakers of the House of Representatives since SWS began regular monitoring in 1990, SWS said.

Chief Justice Puno’s latest score of net +2 is a slight improvement from -2 in December but more or less at the same neutral level as his predecessor Chief Justice Panganiban, whose ratings ranged from -3 to +4.

De Castro issued a statement thanking the people for their “continued trust and confidence” in him.

“As always, I will put the welfare of our people above all interests. I will continue to uphold the highest standards of public service knowing that the public office is a public trust,” the statement read.

“I appreciate their support and view it as an appreciation of my sincerity to seek solutions to their problems. I assure them that I will even double my efforts in serving them.

“I believe that people prefer their leaders to work quietly for them even outside the spotlight of media rather than to focus in politics.,” he said.

The First Quarter of 2008 SWS Survey was conducted over March 28-31, 2008 using face-to-face interviews of 1,200 adults divided into random samples of 300 each in Metro Manila, the Balance of Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao (sampling error margins of ±3% for national percentages and ±6% for area percentages). The area estimates were weighted by National Statistics Office medium-population projections for 2008 to obtain the national estimates.

The quarterly Social Weather Surveys on public satisfaction with the Vice-President, Senate President, Speaker of the House of Representatives, and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court are not commissioned, but are done on SWS’s own initiative and released as a public service, with first printing rights assigned to BusinessWorld.

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