YULE TRUCE: Just a suggestion. All politicians out there may want to agree to cease all political talk — and political combat — effective immediately, through the Yule season, until the feast of the Three Kings on January 4.

Politicians can continue talking about themselves, but refrain from firing verbal missiles at other politicos. Better still, for a change they might try saying something positive about their political rivals.

A Yuletide political moratorium is easy to follow. All one has to do is hold his tongue and pass on strict instructions down the line to observe the truce, to let peace and goodwill reign during the season.

Those who observe it will discover that such a moratorium, even just the part on refraining from talking ill of others, will work wonders for their health.

But what if media insist on stirring the political waters and bait you into talking politics? Smile and talk of something more pleasant, and they will get the hint.

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INCREDIBLE LEAP: We are among the many who found incredible the last Social Weather Stations poll showing actor Fernando Poe Jr. pole-vaulting from fourth to first place in its presidential poll without breaking his back.

The actor nearly doubled his share of respondents from 14 to 25 percent in the poll conducted Nov. 8 to 24.

How can that be when he did not say or do anything significant since the previous survey in September? The jump could not have been due to his confirming that he was running for president, because the expected announcement came on Nov. 26, or two days after the survey.

The SWS itself was not able to offer a plausible explanation for the incredible leap of the action star in the esteem of the respondents.

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STRATEGIC BUILDUP: What stuck out was the revelation that Dr. Mahar Mangahas, SWS president, is the first cousin of Poe. The actor’s mother Bessie Kelley is a sister of Ruby Kelley, Mangahas’ mother.

Many of us also noted that that survey was commissioned by a strategy study group of Jose Leviste.

So we did not find it surprising that Sen. Loren Legarda suddenly shot up in the ratings to a breath away behind fellow broadcaster Sen. Noli de Castro, the consistent leader in the vice presidential rankings.

We sense a strategic buildup, presumably for bandwagon effect, of Poe and Legarda — possibly with the objective of having Legarda run for vice president in tandem with Poe.

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RIDER DOES IT: A politician once told us that he had been able to maintain a respectable standing in some of the polls by subscribing and paying for what he called a “rider” in the survey questionnaire.

He said the best way to come out in positive light is to commission the survey, but that this was very expensive. Instead, he spends less by paying only for a rider — a question whose answer he is interested in — that is included in the survey for him.

Do pollsters actually conduct field interviews? He said he did not know, nor was he interested as long as he came out in good standing in the results.

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TABLE SURVEY: We have been around asking people if they had ever been interviewed by survey field workers. All these years, we have not met one interviewee. We find that strange.

A statistician friend has told us that doing a survey report without actual field work was a breeze.

In what he called a “table survey,” he would analyze previous reports and statistical data pertaining to the subject.

Using his computer, he then organized a set of figures (“poll results”)and drew conclusions that later come out uncannily close to the alleged results of professional surveys.

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WOW, NUISANCE: Wow, Secretary Dick Gordon, sir, what’s happening to your Walled City touristic attractions near San Agustin church?

While you were not looking, the Intramuros Administration has allowed the putting up of rowdy bar-restaurants and tiangges that have become a nuisance to long-time residents and visitors of clamshells featuring cultural/touristic exhibits.

The watering holes blare super-loud noise (supposed to be music) from early evening through past midnight, depriving residents and their children of the peace and quiet they used to enjoy before WOW Philippines came around.

Complaints to the Intramuros Administration, which reportedly collects 10 percent of earnings of establishments, fall on deaf ears. So maybe it’s time for Flash Gordon to fly in to restore the peace.

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A DISGRACE: Some bar-restos are giving Intramuros and WOW attractions a bad name. They draw mostly local night hawks in search of hard drinking, deafening music and occasional flesh shows. They are a disgrace to Philippine tourism.

One of the watering holes being denounced by residents is on Arsobispo St. But the rest of Intramuros, including the areas near the campuses and business offices, is not any better.

Foreign tourists who stray into the ghettoes around the Cathedral are sometimes molested. If they come out unscathed, they go home and tell stories about the squalid shanties and the squatters who spill into the narrow streets like ants.

We spend good money and tire out ourselves to lure foreign tourists — and then we expose them to the seamy side of the Walled City?

What is the Intramuros Administration doing? Too busy counting collections?

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ORDERS ARE ORDERS: Director General Hermogenes Ebdane, national police chief, is right in cracking down on Director Eduardo Matillano, erstwhile head of the PNP criminal investigation and detection group, for resisting reassignment and talking ill of his superior.

Matillano has been in uniform long enough to know that orders of a superior are presumed to be in order and must be followed almost by reflex. If he has any complaint, he should first follow and complain later.

Or better still, he should resign and when he is on the outside, he can damn and curse and kick to his heart’s content.

As Herbert Hubbard tells all men in uniform (and even us civilian workers), “if you work for a man… speak well of him and stand by the institution he represents…” Otherwise, he said, “the first high wind that comes along will blow you away.”

You cannot run a military or police service if every other member in uniform bitches around and grumbles and claims the option to choose what orders to follow and what to defy.