MANILA, Philippines -- Fifty percent of Filipinos are dissatisfied with how the administration has been fighting inflation, graft and corruption while 50 percent of Filipinos are satisfied with how the government has managed foreign relations, according to a recent survey of the Social Weather Stations (SWS).

 "Dissatisfaction... traditionally prevails on the matter of eradicating graft and corruption," the SWS said Monday in a statement about its second quarter report.

"The national administration has always received negative marks for its performance on fighting inflation, ever since [it was] first surveyed by SWS in November 1991."

Dissatisfaction with government performance on "ensuring no family will be hungry" was another dominant sentiment since this was first surveyed by SWS in August 2005.

The government received high marks (+19) on issues regarding helping the poor, with 52 percent satisfied and 33 percent dissatisfied.

However, the government received "clearly negative scores" (-17) on the issue of hunger among families, with 47 percent saying they were not satisfied with how it moved to "[ensure] that no family will be hungry," compared to the 30 percent saying they were satisfied.

Meanwhile, net satisfaction on fighting crimes was "neutral" at -3, with 38 percent satisfied and 41 percent dissatisfied—a fall from the February rating of +10.Aside from the issue of foreign relations, which gained the highest public satisfaction score at +22 (50 percent satisfied, 27 percent dissatisfied), the government also scored high on fighting terrorism at +18 (49 percent satisfied and 31 percent dissatisfied) and land distribution under land reform at +11 (44 percent satisfied and 11 percent dissatisfied).

"The National Administration has typically enjoyed positive net satisfaction ratings on foreign relations, going to -7 only during the Flor Contemplacion crisis in 1995," SWS said.

Contemplacion was a domestic helper convicted for murder and executed in Singapore. Her execution was met by storms of protest here in the country.The government's net satisfaction rating on foreign relations ranged from +19 to +32, since the dip of +15 in May 2005.

The public’s rating on how the government had been fighting terrorism was "generally positive" ranging from +6 to +21 in the past two years. But it gave "more or less neutral ratings" to how the administration had been fighting crime.

The public’s rating on how the government had been helping the poor dipped to +19, a six-percentage drop from the +25 rating last February.

Net satisfaction rating on this issue ranged from -4 to +25 in the past two years.Net ratings for the government's performance on hunger among families was -17, down from the -10 it received last February. It reached a record low of -34 in March 2006.

Meanwhile, dissatisfaction with government efforts at eradicating graft and corruption has "eased slightly" over the past three quarters, ranging from -19 to -14, after being in the -30s in 2006.

The same trend was observed for ratings on fighting inflation, which ranged from -25 to -14 in the last three quarters, after ranging -43 to -22 since the beginning of President Macapagal-Arroyo's second term in 2004 up to the end of 2006.

The survey was conducted from June 27 to June 30, using face-to-face interviews of 1,200 adults divided into random samples of 300 each in Metro Manila, the rest of Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao. It had a margin of error of plus-minus 3 percentage points.

Source: Inquirer.net by Kate V. Pedroso