Gloria Macapagal Arroyo looked on track for six more years as Philippine president, a pollster said yesterday, but her movie-star rival insisted he was winning and warned of counting irregularities.
The exit poll by Social Weather Stations (SWS) showed Arroyo taking 40 percent of the vote in Monday's national elections, ahead of action-movie hero Fernando Poe Jr with 32 percent.
The poll of 4,600 voters across the Philippines had a margin of error of 2 percent. Arroyo's margin of victory was slightly higher than in pre-election surveys by SWS and Pulse Asia, the country's other major pollster.
Poe, the gun-toting hero in 282 movies, had earlier expressed surprise he was trailing Arroyo in polls.
"We are ahead but the media are reporting the exact opposite. So I am appealing to the media to be fair and report the truth.
"This government should not use money and intimidate the nation," he told a news conference.
His camp was trying to organize a "victory rally" at a major intersection in the Makati business district during rush hour and asked supporters to show up in red, his campaign color.
Other early surveys suggested Monday's election was a tight race, raising the specter of more uncertainty for Filipinos and foreign investors already uneasy about corruption, huge debts, insurgencies, poverty and a weak economy.
The peso and stocks fell sharply, although that was partly in reaction to a global market slide on Monday.
The official count will take a month as teachers tally votes by hand and ballot boxes make a long journey from local polling stations to regional and national centers, with some officials bribed to alter the results along the way.
After a bitter three-month campaign, Arroyo and Poe had a uniform message about the need for vigilance against cheating and for the media to report the results accurately.
"All must now conduct themselves with prudence, sobriety and respect for the democratic process," Arroyo said.
If she wins, Arroyo gains her first real mandate to lead the largely Roman Catholic nation of 82 million after she rose into the job in 2001 in the second of two "people power" uprisings.
Arroyo, a 57-year-old US-trained economist and daughter of a former president, put down a brief mutiny by junior officers in Manila's financial district in July.
Despite 114 poll-related deaths since December, the military said the election was generally peaceful with no feared attacks by al-Qaeda-linked rebels or plots to disrupt the vote.
The Legislative Yuan’s Finance Committee yesterday approved proposed amendments to the Amusement Tax Act (娛樂稅法) that would abolish taxes on films, cultural activities and competitive sporting events, retaining the fee only for dance halls and golf courses. The proposed changes would set the maximum tax rate for dance halls and golf courses at 50 and 20 percent respectively, with local governments authorized to suspend the levies. Article 2 of the act says that “amusement tax shall be levied on tickets sold or fees charged by amusement places, facilities or activities” in six categories: “Cinema; professional singing, story-telling, dancing, circus, magic show, acrobatics
Tainan, Taipei and New Taipei City recorded the highest fines nationwide for illegal accommodations in the first quarter of this year, with fines issued in the three cities each exceeding NT$7 million (US$220,639), Tourism Administration data showed. Among them, Taipei had the highest number of illegal short-term rental units, with 410. There were 3,280 legally registered hotels nationwide in the first quarter, down by 14 properties, or 0.43 percent, from a year earlier, likely indicating operators exiting the market, the agency said. However, the number of unregistered properties rose to 1,174, including 314 illegal hotels and 860 illegal short-term rental
INFLATION UP? The IMF said CPI would increase to 1.5 percent this year, while the DGBAS projected it would rise to 1.68 percent, with GDP per capita of US$44,181 The IMF projected Taiwan’s real GDP would grow 5.2 percent this year, up from its 2.1 percent outlook in January, despite fears of global economic disruptions sparked by the US-Iran conflict. Taiwan’s consumer price index (CPI) is projected to increase to 1.5 percent, while unemployment would be 3.4 percent, roughly in line with estimates for Asia as a whole, the international body wrote in its Global Economic Outlook Report published in the US on Monday. The figures are comparatively better than the IMF outlook for the rest of the world, which pegged real GDP growth at 3.1 percent, down from 3.3 percent
ECONOMIC COERCION: Such actions are often inconsistently applied, sometimes resumed, and sometimes just halted, the Presidential Office spokeswoman said The government backs healthy and orderly cross-strait exchanges, but such arrangements should not be made with political conditions attached and never be used as leverage for political maneuvering or partisan agendas, Presidential Office spokeswoman Karen Kuo (郭雅慧) said yesterday. Kuo made the remarks after China earlier in the day announced 10 new “incentive measures” for Taiwan, following a landmark meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) in Beijing on Friday. The measures, unveiled by China’s Xinhua news agency, include plans to resume individual travel by residents of Shanghai and China’s Fujian
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