Majority of Filipinos agree on Marcos admin's response to WPS dispute — OCTA

Around 60% of adult Filipinos agree with the response of the Marcos administration to address the territorial dispute between the Philippines and China in the West Philippine Sea, an OCTA survey showed on Tuesday.

Results of the Tugon ng Masa National Survey showed that 61% now agree with the administration’s response, an increase from the 58% recorded in OCTA’s October 2023 survey.

OCTA said the National Capital Region recorded the highest agreement rating of 67% while Mindanao recorded the lowest rating at 52%.

“Furthermore, disagreement rating with the Marcos Jr. administration's response to address the territorial disputes between the Philippines and China in the West Philippine Sea decreased across major areas,” OCTA said.

Meanwhile, Filipinos belonging to Class D had the highest rating agreement among all socioeconomic classes with 64% while Filipinos belonging to Class E recorded the lowest agreement at 51%.

OCTA said that the agreement rating in socioeconomic classes ABC and D increased by 4 percentage points.

On the other hand, it decreased by 3 percentage points in Class E.

“Also, the percentage of adult Filipinos who disagree with the Marcos Jr. Administration's response decreased for all socioeconomic classes since October 2023,” OCTA said.

The survey showed that disagreement rating among Class ABC had a decrease of 12 percentage points.

Meanwhile, according to OCTA, the highest agreement rating was recorded from Filipinos aged 75 and above at 70% while the lowest agreement rating was recorded from Filipinos aged 45 to 54 at 51%.

The latter age group also recorded the highest disagreement rating at 15%.

The survey was conducted from December 10 to December 14, 2023 using face-to-face interviews with 1,200 adult respondents. It had a ±3 margin of error for Metro Manila, Balance Luzon, the Visayas, and Mindanao.

The Philippines has repeatedly called out China over its repeated aggression in the WPS that include the ramming and firing of water cannons at Philippine vessels.

Tensions between China and Philippines have heightened in recent months as both sides trade accusations over a series of incidents in the WPS.

In 2016, the Permanent Court of Arbitration concluded that China had no legal basis to claim historic rights to resources within the sea areas falling within the ‘nine-dash line.’

China, however, has said that it does not recognize the ruling. — RSJ, GMA Integrated News