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Philippine candidates trade accusations

A city maintenance worker removes campaign posters in a street in Paranaque, south of Manila, Philippines, yesterday. PHOTO: EPA

Philippine candidates traded accusations of fraud yesterday as early election results showed the opposition leading the Senate race.

The opposition also criticized authorities for characterizing Monday's elections as relatively peaceful. At least 126 people have been killed since campaigning started in January, compared with 189 in the 2004 polls.

With votes counted by hand, final results for half of the 24 Senate seats, all 265 House of Representatives members and 17,500 local posts could be weeks away.

An exit poll by independent surveyor Pulse Asia and ABS-CBN television said six opposition candidates, four allies of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and two independents were likely to win Senate seats.

Two are former military officers fighting charges of involvement in coup plots against Arroyo. One is the son of former President Corazon Aquino, a key ally who has turned against Arroyo.

The poll surveyed more than 12,000 voters and had a 1.6 percentage point margin of error. The results were echoed by a quick count by the NAMFREL watchdog, which surveyed the tallies at 7 percent of the country's nearly 300,000 precincts.

While the opposition was expected to retain control of the Senate, which has been used to rein in Arroyo, her backers were likely to keep control of the House -- dooming any effort to launch a third impeachment bid over claims she fixed the 2004 election.

"I believe we will have an even bigger majority in the House and an almost complete sweep of the local chief executives," Arroyo said in a statement. "There's going to be political stability."

The administration said it was concerned about the accuracy of early surveys showing the opposition leading.

"We should not be fixed on these surveys because they're unofficial and very partial, very marginal to actually predict the whole outcome," said the administration campaign's spokesman, Tonypet Albano.

He said if the official results by the Commission on Elections turn out to be different from the surveys, it might trigger massive protests.

Opposition spokesman Adel Tamano said by questioning the surveys, the administration was laying the groundwork for rigging the results. He recalled the 2004 election, in which the opposition claims Arroyo cheated by a million-vote margin.

A group of international observers in the southern Philippines said they witnessed threats and vote-buying inside some precincts.

The opposition slammed the government's description of the polls as "relatively peaceful." Incumbent Senator Francisco Pangilinan noted that the shooting at the US Virginia Tech campus which killed 33 was called a massacre, and in the Philippines, more than 100 dead is called "generally peaceful."

Meanwhile, Communist rebels killed seven soldiers in the northern Philippines yesterday when they attacked an army patrol securing ballots from recent elections, officials said.

The military said up to 100 guerrillas from the Communist Party's New People's Army (NPA) were involved in the attack just before dawn as the soldiers secured a road near the town of Boliney in Abra province.

The NPA had earlier vowed to mount attacks to disrupt the May 14 congressional and local elections.

In a separate incident, an NPA guerrilla was killed when an army patrol sighted the rebel's group in Manito town, south of Manila, an army statement said.

Some ten NPA guerrillas clashed with the patrol before retreating, leaving rifles and ammunition.
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