"Fearless Forecast" Propaganda

Neal Cruz's column today:

THIS is a surprise: It will be a dead heat for President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and Senator Panfilo Lacson in the presidential election on Monday, with Fernando Poe Jr. in third place, Eddie Villanueva in fourth, and Raul Roco at the tail-end. In the vice-presidential race, however, Loren Legarda will beat Senator Noli de Castro by a big margin, with Hermie Aquino and Poe tying for third place. There were votes for Poe as a vice-presidential candidate, perhaps anticipating that he would slide down to the No. 2 slot in case of unification between his and Lacson's camps.

That is the fearless forecast of journalists -- at least those who regularly attend the weekly Kapihan sa Manila media forum. Because the forum last Monday was the last Kapihan before the elections a week later, we decided to hold a straw poll for the presidential, vice-presidential and senatorial candidates. The question was: "Who do you think will win?" not "Whom will you vote for?" In other words, regardless of their personal preferences, who do they think will win? To put it another way, the result was not the way they would vote but, based on their estimates and analyses, the way the whole nation would vote. Journalists like to analyze and predict things, let's see how accurate their forecasts are when compared to the actual results of the elections.

Instead of having the usual politicians and public officials as resource persons, we turned the tables on four columnists (Julius Fortuna of Manila Times, Alvin Capino and Danny Mariano of Today, and Jonathan de la Cruz of Malaya) on the hot seat to answer questions from the audience, make their fearless forecasts and explain them. Then we polled the audience and the panelists on their forecasts on the winners.

The results: for president -- Ms Macapagal-Arroyo, 40.5 percent; Lacson, 40.5 percent; Poe, 10.8 percent; Villanueva, 5.4 percent; Roco, 2.7 percent.
.....

Three of the four panelists (Fortuna, Capino and Mariano) believe Ms Macapagal-Arroyo will be the winner, but De la Cruz chose Poe. They all said, however, that the vice-presidential race would be very close.

Oh Neal, don't you know that 3 of the four "journalist" in your panel are pro-GMA hacks (Capino, Fortuna and Mariano).

Aside from writing Columns for Today, Alvin Capino was appointed as director of Bases Conversion Development Authority under GMA.

Si Julius Fortuna naman of Manila Times was also appointed by GMA as director of PNOC.

So mga bayaran ang mga ito. If you read their columns carefully, they've never attacked GMA and Jose Pidal. Sure, they've written some negative things about the admin, cabinet members and the people surrounding her, but I don't recall dir. capino and dir. fortuna attacking GMA directly on the many corruption issues plaguing her.

And as for Mariano, matagal na nating alam na isa siyang resident na pro-GMA "intellectual" sa Today.

When these 3 clowns say that GMA and Ping each will get 40.5% and FPJ will only get 10.8%, they're doing that to divide the pro-Opposition voters by wooing undecided pro-opposition voters away from FPJ to Lacson's camp.