IF there is one mortal sin committed in the pre-ordained offering of the head of ABS-CBN Corp. to President Rodrigo Duterte by pliant members of the House of Representatives, it would be how grossly they have misrepresented the Filipino people. The 70 House members who voted against the granting of a franchise renewal to ABS-CBN are being projected not only by loyal Duterte supporters, but even by Palace spokesman Harry Roque Jr. as having expressed the voice of the people. The audacity of the claim found a clear summation when Duterte loyalist Vivian Velez boldly proclaimed Sagip party-list Rep. Rodante Marcoleta as a “crush ng bayan” for being one of the ringleaders of the congressional lynching of ABS-CBN’s Eugenio Lopez 3rd and Carlo Katigbak.

And then you are confronted with empirical evidence, expressed in clear numbers, courtesy of a survey conducted by the Social Weather Stations (SWS).  The loyal Duterte base cannot dismiss the credibility of SWS, simply because it is the same firm that they believed when it reported in past surveys the President’s daunting and phenomenal popularity. And SWS has now reported a survey that effectively negates the claim that the 70 who voted against ABS-CBN represented the people. Instead, it found through an online survey using a probability sample that three of every four Filipinos support the granting of a franchise to ABS-CBN, and that a clear majority also believes that denying such franchise renewal is an attack on press freedom.

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