MANILA — Lawyer and senatorial candidate Larry Gadon has filed a petition on Monday, seeking to stop survey companies from releasing pre-election survey results.
In his 10-page petition filed before the Commission on Elections (Comelec), Gadon asked the poll body to prevent Pulse Asia and the Social Weather Stations (SWS) from publishing surveys starting February 12.
“It is prayed for this Honorable Commission to command the respondents to cease and desist from further publishing their ‘erroneous’, ‘slanted’, and ‘bogus’ election survey results from the start of the campaign period until election day itself,” he said.
“It is respectfully prayed before this Honorable Commission that the instant Petition be given due course and that respondents SWS and Pulse Asia be directed to cease and desist from publishing bogus survey results calculated to mislead voters pertinent to the position of Senator relative to the May 13, 2019 national elections from the start of the campaign period until election day,” he added.
The petitioner noted that such surveys are pre-conditioning the mind of the people on who they will support in the elections.
“This is seemingly a mind conditioning scheme of the respondents to make it appear before the voting public that their chosen candidates are preferred, when in fact they are not,” he said.
Gadon also cited the number of people being used by SWS and Pulse Asia, which he said is not enough to produce credible results.
“With all these discrepancies and the very small sampling population for surveys conducted by the respondents, it is evident that the results are erroneous, if not totally manufactured or ‘fake’,” he added.
In recent senatorial surveys, Gadon is at no. 43.
Only 12 seats are at stake in the forthcoming senatorial polls. (PNA)
