Millions of Filipinos flocked to schools and other polling stations on Monday to elect their new president, with the son of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos as the favorite to win the contest, marked by episodes of violence.
The polls closed at 7 pm local time, although citizens who were within 30 meters of their polling center were allowed to cast their vote, according to electoral authorities.
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Nearly 40 years after his father was deposed and sent into exile, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. seems set to restore family power.
Ten candidates seek to succeed current President Rodrigo Duterte, but only Marcos and his rival Leni Robredo, current vice president, seem to have a chance of winning.
A high turnout was expected among the more than 65 million Filipinos eligible to vote in these general elections in which vice president, deputies, half of the senators, provincial governors and thousands of other local officials are also elected.
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The Election Commission, which has not confirmed when it could give the first provisional resultsreported that 1.6 million Filipinos voted from abroad and that centers have been set up so that those infected with covid-19 can vote.
The polls suggest a clear victory for Marcos, who is 33 percentage points ahead of Robredo, despite his father’s legacy of plunder and oppression.
Under Philippine electoral law, the winner is the one with the most votes, without the need for a minimum percentage of support.
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One of the earliest to go to the polls was Marcos himself, who deposited his ballot in the provincial capital of Ilocos del Norte, the clan’s traditional fiefdom.
Marcos is running in tandem with Sara Duterte-Carpio, who is favored for the position of vice president, who votes independently, and is the daughter of the current president, Rodrigo Duterte, who by law cannot run for re-election.
Marcos’ campaign has gone to great lengths to cover up the brutal and corrupt record of his father’s regime and to capitalize on voter disenchantment with recent governments.
After six years of authoritarian rule by Duterte, human rights advocates, the Catholic Church and political analysts have expressed fear that Marcos will be driven to rule even more harshly if he wins by a large margin.
Despite the great difference that Marcos has in the polls, some analysts maintain that Robredo, who is the vice president of the country, could cause a surprise and that the results would be much tighter than expected.
Robredo, a human rights lawyer and scourge of Duterte and his war on drugs, has managed to mobilize hundreds of thousands of people in her campaign events and brings together a more progressive and urban electorate.
Other presidential candidates, albeit unlikely to win, include boxing legend Manny Pacquiao; the mayor of Manila, Francisco “Isko” Moreno; and the former director of the National Police and scourge of Duterte, Panfilo Lacson.
The three-month campaign that ended on Saturday has been severely affected by the massive disinformation operation that has flooded social networks with false news and continuous attacks between candidates.
A disinformation, mainly on Facebook, of which the Philippine journalist and Nobel Peace Prize winner, María Ressa, has been warning for years, has allowed the legacy of Marcos and Imelda Marcos, who were in power between 1965 and 1986, to be rewritten.
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The Marcoses were ousted from power after a peaceful popular revolution, but they left behind at least 3,257 people summarily executed, thousands tortured and some 10 billion dollars looted from the public treasury.
However, many Filipinos today regard the Marcos as modernizers of the country, patriotic, compassionate, and see those years as the golden age of the Philippines.
violence on election day
The electoral process registered episodes of violence, the most serious of which was the death of four security guards when a man shot at a polling station in a conflict zone in the south of the country.
The incident occurred shortly after voting began in the Buluan municipality on the southern island of Mindanao, which has a strong presence of armed groups, from communist insurgents to Islamist militants, authorities said.
Gunmen also attacked a polling station in Mindanao’s Lanao del Sur province, killing one person and wounding two others, according to police.
On Sunday night, five grenades exploded in front of a polling station in Datu Unsay township, also in Mindanao, where nine people were injured.
A spokesman for the electoral commission said they were trying to verify whether the actions were related to the elections.
EFE and AFP
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