MANILA, Philippines - Foreign business executives believe that Senator Richard Gordon is the "best" presidential candidate, but will likely choose frontrunner Senator Benigno Aquino III if given the chance to vote.
This was the result of the mock elections conducted at the quarterly round table of the Wallace Business Forum on Thursday. There were 35 participants, who were mostly chief executive officers of multinational companies.
In the mock polls, Gordon emerged as the "best" person to run the country, followed by administration candidate Gilbert Teodoro in second place, Senator Manuel Villar in third, Aquino in fourth, and former president Joseph Estrada in fifth place.
The survey only included the top 5 presidential candidates.
But when asked who they would want to vote for, most CEOs chose Aquino, followed by Teodoro, Villar, Gordon and Estrada.
For the CEOs, the next president should, first and foremost, have no vested interest. They also believe it is important that the next chief executive attract investments and open the economy, and fight corruption and persecute corrupt officials.
As for President Arroyo's performance, 45.5% of the CEOs believe the President did an average job while 27.3% think she did poorly. About 27.3% rated Mrs. Arroyo's performance as very poor while no respondent found her to be "doing an excellent job" and "doing a good job." - Report from Willard Cheng, ABS-CBN News
