Hysteria over polls

We have recently seen a spate of verbal attacks and public insinuations being made against specific polling companies that are viewed as being anti-government. These have been growing in vehemence and have been blown so out of proportion as to resemble the McCarthy-era witch hunts in the United States.

As a society we should not tolerate a situation whereby institutional and even non-institutional forces are allowed to continuously cast aspersions and bully researchers and pollsters because of the findings they published in the runup to the general elections last month. At the end of the day, these findings that all the fuss is about differed very little from those published in the pro-government media.

Even more surprising, however, is the fact that university authorities would respond to such spurious allegations and pressure by ordering an inquiry.