More than a million candidates took part in the Philippines' latest rambunctious exercise in democracy amid tight security yesterday, seeking nuts-and-bolts local posts that keep the country running.
The 120,000-strong police force was on full alert to guard against fraud and violence, with at least 23 candidates or followers killed since the election season began last month, police Director-General Avelino Razon Jr said.
Voting also was marred by flooding, landslides and a school fire.
The candidates were vying for nearly 672,000 posts in 42,000 villages, known as barangay.
Elected to three-year terms, they fill grassroots posts in the country of 89 million people that range from overseeing garbage collection to weeding out suspected insurgents in their neighborhoods.
Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo lined up to vote in her hometown in Pampanga province, waving and smiling to a small crowd.
Her ousted predecessor, Joseph Estrada, whom she pardoned last week after his plunder conviction, planned to vote in a suburban Manila school for the first time since regaining his freedom.
Razon said troops were helping police secure the balloting in about 4,500 villages considered security hotspots due to the presence of communist or Muslim guerrillas or a history of intense political rivalries.
Midway through the voting, Elections Commissioner Rene Sarmiento reported no major violence or disruption.
"We hear of vote-buying here and there, but it's not a major trend," Sarmiento said.
Before dawn, fire broke out in a school building that was to be used as a voting center in northern Nueva Ecija province, although the cause was unclear.
Elections officials proceeded with voting in nearby buildings, Sarmiento said.
Flooding and landslides set off by heavy rains in the Bicol region, southeast of Manila, might prevent a few hundred villagers from casting their votes.
In Manila's suburbs, radio DZBB reported that a candidate was held by police after pointing his gun at a resident.
Police were concerned that communist guerrillas could use force to ensure the victory of sympathetic candidates, Razon said.
"Our intelligence assessment indicates a massive effort ... to field sympathetic candidates in the elections in order for the movement to regain lost ground," Razon said in a statement on Sunday.
Ahead of the voting, communist guerrillas abducted a candidate for village leader in Basey town in the central province of Samar. Elizabeth Gutierrez, who was kidnapped on Wednesday, was running against a relative of a rebel commander, police said.
A former rebel aspiring to become a village head was killed by suspected communist gunmen last Monday in Villareal town, also in Samar, police said.
Arroyo has repeatedly said she wants to end the communist rebellion by 2010, when her term ends.
The 6,200-strong rebels have been fighting for a Marxist state for 39 years.
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
For two decades, researchers observed members of the Ngogo chimpanzee group of Kibale National Park in Uganda spend their days eating fruits and leaves, resting, traveling and grooming in their tropical rainforest abode, but this stable community then fractured and descended into years of deadly violence. The researchers are now describing the first clearly documented example of a group of wild chimpanzees splitting into two separate factions, with one launching a series of coordinated attacks against the other. Adult males and infants were targeted, with 28 deaths. “Biting, pounding the victim with their hands, dragging them, kicking them — mostly adult males,
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
SUPERFAN: The Japanese PM played keyboard in a Deep Purple tribute band in middle school and then switched to drums at university, she told the British rock band Legendary British rock band Deep Purple yesterday made Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s day with a brief visit to their high-profile superfan as they returned to the nation they first toured more than half a century ago. Takaichi’s reputation as an amateur drummer, and a fan of hard rock and heavy metal has been well documented, and she has referred to Deep Purple as one of her favorite bands along with the likes of Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden. “You are my god,” a giddy Takaichi said in English to Deep Purple drummer Ian Paice, presenting him with a set of made-in-Japan
RSS