ELECTION SURVEYS. Senate President Vicente Sotto III answers questions from the media during a press briefing at a hotel in the uptown area of Cebu City on Thursday (April 7, 2022). Sotto said setting guidelines in the release of election-related surveys can be a "good piece of legislation" for the incoming legislators in the 19th Congress after the May 9 elections. (PNA photo by John Rey Saavedra)
CEBU CITY – Setting guidelines in the release of election-related surveys can be a “good piece of legislation” for the incoming lawmakers in the 19th Congress, Senate President Vicente Sotto III said on Thursday.
“We should have thought about it long before,” Sotto said during a press briefing after his visit to the Cebu Normal University and Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center.
Sotto said pollsters that are doing social weather surveys can continue, but results of political polls must not be printed or broadcast and be limited only by the individual or group that commissioned it.
The vice presidential candidate said “mind conditioning” is detrimental to the rights of the people to choose a leader as it influences the outcome of the elections.
“The issue of the complaints of many about mind conditioning is correct. Right? What happens is that many believe it. The sad part is this and I said it yesterday that if indeed there is mind-conditioning and the pulse firms are doing these based on their work, they should be (held) accountable also for those who are elected (because of) the surveys, their accountability to our countrymen who are still living in very poor conditions,” he said.
Sotto said the manner the data were gathered by the pollster’s contractors must be looked into.
“How are we so sure that these people do not tell some candidates where they are going to conduct a survey?,” he said.
Sotto questioned the surveys putting Senator Panfilo Lacson at the tail with only 2 percent showing despite their rounds in different provinces to campaign for his candidacy as president.
Sotto said he was apprehensive about what he saw in the figures concerning Lacson.
When asked if legislating the regulations would not violate the constitutional rights of pollsters, Sotto said there is no freedom of expression to be violated, saying a survey is not a form of expression.
“You have to strike a balance between their right to do so and somehow (the effect of) disrupting the thinking of some people,” he said. (PNA)
