The Philippines military went on alert yesterday as voters prepared for national polls today following a blood-soaked campaign season that saw more than 110 people killed.
Thousands of soldiers joined police already guarding polling facilities to "stop election violence and move forcefully against those using threats and intimidation for partisan ends," a presidential statement said.
President Gloria Arroyo is hoping to keep a majority in the House of Representatives as well as most of the 12 seats being contested in the 24-member Senate to ensure a smooth last three years of her rule.
Some 45 million voters will elect parliamentarians to the 275-seat House of Representatives as well as governors, mayors and provincial and municipal or city councils throughout the nation.
Arroyo expressed confidence yesterday that her allies would sweep congressional and local elections, although opinion polls point to the opposition tightening control of the Senate.
About 87,000 candidates contesting nearly 18,000 positions spent the last day in motorcades, rallies, prayers and last-minute efforts to win votes across the country, known for its raucous campaigning and tall promises.
"The administration is looking forward to gaining a new majority in the Senate courtesy of a decisive Team Unity victory," Arroyo's political adviser, Gabriel Claudio, said in a statement yesterday.
Team Unity is the name given to the administration's slate of 12 candidates for the Senate.
About 1,000 police and soldiers are guarding the northern province of Abra, where a policeman was killed by suspected guns for hire in the town of Danglas late on Saturday to add to months of deadly political violence that claimed the life of Abra Legislator Luis Bersamin in December.
"It is heating up. This is the end game between now and tomorrow at election time," said Senior Superintendent Villamor Bumanglag, chief of a police task force that will field seven officers for every precinct on election day.
"There have been a lot of reports of armed groups moving in remote areas and we are checking on them," he said.
While the presidency is not at stake, analysts said the result would have a large bearing on efforts by the opposition to unseat Arroyo over allegations she cheated to win the May 2004 ballot. She denies the allegations.
Pro-Arroyo parties are expected to keep a comfortable majority in the House of Representatives, which would ensure that no further impeachment complaints against her would succeed.
The election has been under intense foreign scrutiny amid a wave of murders of hundreds of supporters of fringe leftist parties since Arroyo came to power in 2001, some of which the military says are fronts for communist guerrillas.
Police put the official death toll from the three-month campaign period at 113 throughout the country, where vote-buying and electoral violence are commonplace.
Police and military units were deployed in several districts hit by bloodshed in the run-up to the vote, and were also drafted in to transport ballot boxes and escort foreign observers to far-flung areas.
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