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Security threats, fears of cheating mar campaign

With a week to go before the May 10 presidential election and no clear leader, concerns grew yesterday over possible cheating, violence and terror attacks that have forced Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to cancel campaign sorties.

Arroyo has overtaken movie star Fernando Poe Jr, the opposition frontrunner, in recent surveys. Other candidates claim the polling may have been manipulated to favor her and lay the groundwork for possible cheating.

The five candidates anxiously awaited the crucial endorsements of two large religious groups -- the Protestant Iglesia ni Cristo and the Catholic El Shaddai -- whose large followings traditionally vote as blocs. Their support could provide the edge in a closely fought battle.

Newspapers, quoting unidentified sources, reported over the weekend that Arroyo would get both groups' backing.

As candidates buckled down for the final stretch, attention focused on security threats after soldiers and police arrested two Muslim men on Saturday with a homemade bomb allegedly targeted for the elections commission headquarters in Manila.

The military urged Manila residents to be vigilant against possible terror assaults intended to disrupt the elections.

Arroyo's aides announced that the final leg of her campaign in the south has been canceled due to possible threats on her life.

"We don't want to underestimate the desperation of terrorist groups or any unscrupulous elements to carry out an attempt on the life of the president," her spokesman, Ignacio Bunye, said in a statement.

A key Arroyo backer, House of Representatives Speaker Jose de Venecia, and Poe's campaign security chief, Senator Gregorio Honasan, signed an accord yesterday to promote peaceful and clean elections. Honasan, accused of plotting a coup against Arroyo last year, denied news reports that he was defecting to her camp.

"There are no changes in [my] job descriptions," he told a news conference.

"This event is precisely designed to lay to rest the dominant feeling now which is fear and mutual suspicion that might lead to projections that there will be post-elections violence. We will all be losers if that happens," he said.

Although the race has been largely free of the killings and violence that have characterized campaigning for local and congressional elections, it has been full of recriminations.

It has been largely seen as a proxy battle between Arroyo and Joseph Estrada, the popular president she helped oust in January 2001 over corruption allegations. Estrada, detained while on trial for the capital crime of economic plunder, is Poe's best friend.

Poe's camp has accused Arroyo of using government resources to woo voters. Presidents are constitutionally barred from seeking re-election to prevent that, but Arroyo, who is finishing out Estrada's term and was not voted into office, is not covered by the ban. Her smiling face is on health cards, construction billboards, water delivery trucks and government ads.
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