Surveys as pre-election cheating?

There's now a surge to put Gibo in Malacañang!
SHOOTING STRAIGHT By Bobit S. Avila (The Philippine Star) Updated May 07, 2010 12:00 AM

Yesterday we featured the Smart/Philippine STAR survey that shows Gibo and Noynoy Aquino are in a virtual tie in almost all issues and that survey only proves to one and all that the SWS & Pulse Asia surveys were manipulated. This story came out in the left front page of The Philippine STAR last Thursday entitled, “Noynoy kin, allies, behind Pulse, SWS’. Proof of the pudding is the Smart/Philippine STAR surveys that Gibo isn’t ranking only a single-digit as what SWS and Pulse Asia was selling to us.

It is also fact that this week alone, GIBO has suddenly experienced a last minute surge obviously coming from the silent majority or the undecided voters who took the slogan “Kaming Walang Kibo; Ay para kay Gibo!” Again proof of this comes from an email sent to me yesterday.

“Sir for the past days I have been trying to gauge voters’ sentiments in social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter in order to gauge if Gibo could really be a “Dark Horse” candidate. It appears there is a steady surge of support for Gilbert Theodoro’s candidacy. Proof to this is the fact that GIbo’s official fan page grew from 260,000 fans to around 330,000 in less than 24 hours. I wanted to ask you if you notice a similar welling of support in the form of reactions to your column. Thanks. RB Osorio, 4th year student BS International Relations major in Diplomacy Lyceum of the Philippines U.”

Mr. Osorio, truth to tell, my Facebook and my emails have been deluged with letters thanking me for enlightening our readers on the truth about Gibo Teodoro. Although I did get a few nasty ones, who tell me that I’m a liar, a braggart and yes, some even asking me how much is Gibo paying me for the columns we write. All I can say to these people who deals on hatred is, “God forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.” But this is part of my neighborhood being a columnist. These people do not even know that I am based in Cebu. But if I’m getting less than 1 percent nasty letters, then there must be something good that I am doing. 

Again for our final plea… especially to those who are undecided at this time that they shouldn’t be fooled into believing that yarn that a vote for Gibo is a vote for Manny Villar. This idiocy has been debunked by the Smart/Philippine STAR survey. Hence a vote for Gibo is a vote for Gibo!