Binay rated among highly trusted veeps — SWS poll

Vice President Jejomar Binay posted one of the highest satisfaction rating, with a predominantly “very good” rating among officials in the line of succession of President Aquino, a recent Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey showed.

The SWS survey showed that 70 percent of Filipinos were happy with Binay’s performance against only 12 percent dissatisfied, giving the Vice President a 58 percent net satisfaction score.

“The result of the SWS survey encourages me to work harder in helping our people fulfill their dream of owning their own homes and having a better life. It also inspires me to persevere in promoting the rights and welfare of our OFWs. I am grateful and humbled by the people’s support,” Binay said.

Binay heads the Housing and Urban Development Coordi-nating Council (HUDCC) and was recently appointed presidential adviser on overseas Filipino workers’ (OFWs) concerns.

The survey showed Binay scoring higher than most past Vice Presidents rated by the

SWS including Noli de Castro’s rating of 22 percent in May 2005, Teofisto T. Guingona Jr.’s 19 percent in March 2001, and Salvador H. Laurel’s 44 percent in October 1986.

Only two other counterparts, Joseph Estrada who posted an “excellent” 78 percent in September 1992 and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s 73 percent in September 1998, posted higher marks than Binay.

The survey results also showed improved net ratings for the Cabinet from negative 7 to 22 percent; the Supreme Court from nine to 33 percent; Senate from 25 to 48 percent; and House of Representatives from seven to 30 percent.

The poll was conducted on September 24 to 27 using face-to-face interviews of 1,200 adults nationwide. It has a three percent plus and minus sampling error margin for national and plus and minus six percent for area percentages.

An earlier SWS survey on the trustworthiness of national leaders conducted in June showed that Binay has a “very good” net trust rating of 69 percent. At least 77 percent of Filipinos believed in the Vice President’s leadership and only eight percent have little trust on him.

Speaker Feliciano R. Belmonte, Jr. got a net nine percent satisfaction (34 percent satisfied against 25 percent dissatisfied) which was an improvement from his predecessors Prospero Nograles’ net negative 12 in March 2008, and Arnulfo Fuentebella’s net negative four in Dec. 2000.

Senate president Juan Ponce Enrile remained highly trusted with a net satisfaction rating of 39 percent from 41 percent in June while Chief Justice Renato Corona’s rating picked up to negative 5 from negative 18 three months earlier.

The results of the survey were already known to Binay as early as last week, when he addressed housing stakeholders at the close of National Shelter celebrations.

The Vice President shared the accolade with Aquino, who he described as installing “a government that pursues progress not to the exclusion, but, in fact, for the benefit of the poor” whose shelter or housing is being looked after.

To last week’s crowd that included diplomats and real estate executives, Binay remarked:

“Housing or the lack of it is a global concern because no nation is exempt from it. Whenever there is conflict, shelter is one of the first to go — and whenever there is no shelter, people have nowhere to go.”

”Displacement, dislocation are ugly words that become fashionable in areas of conflict, but, of course, no one wants to wear them … they join another fashionable euphemism: informal settlements. In short, slums, squatters, urban blight. The euphemism cannot diminish the reality,” he noted.

The records of Binay’s office show a national shortage of 3.6 million units of housing, which includes those for 1.3 million informal settlers, about half of whom are in highly urbanized metropolis, particularly Metro Manila.

The problems alone of addressing 700,000 informal settlers is daunting enough, said Binay, especially when taken in the context of them living within the 30 per cent poverty threshold in the Philippines. He likened the HUDCC to “a conductor trying to orchestrate dissonant interests.”

Binay proposed anew the idea of a multi-stakeholder approach to shelter for the poor, calling on the participation in socialized housing of the private sector and what he called the “global stakeholders.”

To the private sector, he exhorted that its profit motive “need not work at cross-purposes with government or public sector social programs.” To global stakeholders, he proposed the inking of bilateral or multilateral agreements that could reduce disaster risks and urban blight.

But despite best efforts, joint public-private endeavors have “historically managed” to produce only 33 per cent of housing needs, thus the unserviced 67 per cent contributing to the 3.6 million deficiency in housing units.

Binay said it is clear then that his public sector job is to focus on the bottom of the 30 per cent threshold, which he described as the “least capable of purchasing shelter in the conventional manner” — mortgage financing.

Added to this stark scenario. Binay stressed, is contending with urban renewal and disaster risk management. This is where the global community could come in, he noted. –Daily Tribune