Marcos Jr. tipped to win Philippines election

Manila, May 9 (BNA): Filipinos stood in long queues to choose a new president on Monday, with the son of an ousted strongman and human rights defender fronting the contenders at a fragile moment in a deeply divided Asian democracy.

Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the son of the strongman who was ousted in the military-backed “people power” uprising in 1986, has made a seemingly insurmountable lead in pre-election polls, Associated Press reports.

But his closest rival, Vice President Lenny Robredo, capitalized on shock and anger at the prospect of Marcos regaining the seat of power and tapped into a network of campaign volunteers to support her candidacy.

Eight others are running for the presidency, including former boxing star Manny Pacquiao, Manila Mayor Isco Moreno and former national police chief Senator Panfilo Lacson.

Long queues of early voters emerged in most parts of the country, with the start of voting being delayed by a few hours in a few areas due to broken voting machines, power outages, bad weather and other problems.

Thousands of police and military personnel have been deployed to secure constituencies, especially in rural areas with a history of violent political rivalries, and where communist and Muslim insurgents are active.

And in Maguindanao province, a security hotspot in the south, gunmen killed three village guards outside an election center in Pulwan town, briefly disrupting voting. Nine potential voters and their comrades were injured separately Sunday night when unknown assailants fired five grenades at Datu Onsai Town Hall, police said.

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The winner of the election will take office on June 30 for one six-year term as leader of a Southeast Asian country hit hard by two years of the COVID-19 outbreak and lockdown.

The most challenging problems still include the pandemic-ridden economy, extreme poverty and unemployment, and decades-old Islamist and communist insurgencies.

Duterte’s daughter, the mayor of the southern city of Davao, Sarah Duterte, has topped polls as the vice president of Marcos Jr. in an alliance of descendant of two authoritarian leaders involved in human rights groups.

The coalition incorporated voting power into their separate political strongholds in the north and south, boosting their chances but raising the concerns of human rights activists.

“In our campaign, I learned not to retaliate,” Sarah Duterte told her followers Saturday night on the final day of the campaign, as she and Marcos Jr. thanked a large crowd for a night of rap, dance shows and fireworks near Manila Bay.

At her private rally, Robredo thanked her supporters who jammed her star-studded looks and fought a house-to-house battle to endorse her brand of clean, pragmatic politics. I asked them to fight for national ideals after the elections.

“We knew those who woke up would never close their eyes again,” Robredo told a crowd that filled Main Street in the capital’s Makati financial district. “It is our right to have a future with dignity, and it is our responsibility to fight for it.”

Besides the presidency, more than 18,000 government positions are being contested, including half of the 24-member Senate, more than 300 seats in the House of Representatives, as well as regional and local offices across the archipelago of more than 109 million Filipinos.

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More than 67 million people, including about 1.6 million Filipinos abroad, have registered to cast their votes. When polling stations close after the 13-hour day, thousands of counting machines will immediately send results to be counted.

In the 2016 competition, Duterte emerged as the clear winner within a few hours and quickly ceded his main rivals. Robredo won the vice president’s race that year by a narrow margin over Marcus Jr., the result being slower to become known.






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