By Sonny Fernandez
Filipino voters crowd the schools which serve the polling places in the national elections. In the picture and/or video is Antipolo National High School. A mountain resort and pilgrimage city, Antipolo ranks 6 among vote-rich cities in the Philippines with 471, 250 registered voters.
Millions of Filipinos troop to polling places in schools nationwide today to cast their vote for new national and local leaders.
The political contest will determine the successor of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, Vice President Leni Robredo, members of congress, party-list representatives as well as local executives throughout the country.
The new leadership will lead the country through the coronavirus pandemic, debilitating P12.03 trillion foreign debts, deepest contraction in economy among ASEAN nations, 3.13 unemployed and divisive slew of misinformation and disinformation.
More than 65.7 million Filipinos are expected to vote while another 1.697 million more are migrants who will elect their officials in embassies and consulates or by mail in their host countries in a month-long overseas voting.
Quezon City tops the list of most vote-rich cities with 1,403,895 followed by the country’s capital and seat of Presidential Palace, Manila, with 1,133,042 registered voters.
Meanwhile, Cebu leads the list of most vote-rich provinces, with around 3.288 million registered voters.
Two presidential aspirants are leading the race, namely, Vice President Leni Robredo, wife of the late Local Government Secretary Jesse Robredo, and Bongbong Marcos Jr, son of the late dictator, Ferdinand Marcos.
Robredo tops the Google Trends while Marcos leads the surveys.
Commission on Elections (COMELEC) Commissioner George Garcia said in an earlier briefing, election results will be known in a week after the polls.
“By the seventh day we can already see the winning president and vice president based on partial and unofficial results,” Garcia said.
Results for senatorial election will be released within three to four days after May 9.
Winning candidates for the local executive and legislative posts can be proclaimed by the Comelec as early as the evening of May 9.
The Duterte administration has been notorious for extrajudicial killings of more than 6,000 in its drugs war and is now under investigation by the International Criminal Court. Human rights groups approximate up to 28,000 victims of state-sponsored killings.
President Duterte has also been the subject of local and international rebuke for its red-tagging of suspected communist fronts, spreading lies and fake news as well as for suppressing press freedom.
23 journalists were killed under the Duterte administration.
Duterte also ordered the closure of the country’s largest television network, ABS-CBN and the arrest of Nobel Peace Prize Awardee, journalist Maria Ressa, founder and CEO of online news portal, Rappler, also the target of harassment by the incumbent dispensation.
END
Comments