Phantom Maelstrom

Renato Corona

Philippines - It seems it does not bode well for the judiciary branch of the government, having been double teamed by the Executive and the Legislative branches and now, they are losing the support of the people as well.

Public satisfaction for the impeached Chief Justice Renato Corona has dropped further and is now in the negative territory, a new Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey revealed on Friday.

The survey was conducted last December 3-7, 2011, and shows that net satisfaction for Corona has dipped from 0 in the past 2 quarterly surveys to -14 in the past month.

The latest net satisfaction for Corona is only 4 percentage points higher than his previous all-time low of -18 in the June 2010 survey of SWS.

Corona has received the lowest net satisfaction rating among chief justices since the SWS started doing surveys on government officials' ratings in October 1986. He has yet to receive positive net satisfaction ratings since being appointed the country's top magistrate in 2010.

Corona is facing possible ouster after being impeached by the House of Representatives. His impeachment trial before the Senate will start on January 16.


The SWS survey, meanwhile, showed a 7-percentage-point increase for Vice-President Jejomar Binay's net satisfaction rating, from +63 in September 2011 to +70 in December 2011.

Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile's net satisfaction rating rose slightly from +35 to +36 while Speaker Sonny Belmonte's rating dipped slightly from +9 to +8 during the period.

Meanwhile, public satisfaction for the country's top government institutions also suffered in the last quarter of 2011. Public satisfaction for the Senate dropped from +55 to +44, the House of Representatives' rating dropped from +31 to +27, while the Cabinet's rating dropped from +24 to +22.

Public satisfaction for the Supreme Court also dropped from +29 to +21.

With the current government tearing each other apart, we can expect a further drop in the government ratings, unless there are some changes to take place.