The popular mayor of the Philippine capital yesterday registered his candidacy for the presidency in next year’s elections, promising to ease COVID-19 outbreaks, fix the country’s battered economy and heal deep political divisions.
Manila Mayor Isko Moreno is one of several aspirants in what is expected to be a crowded and politically hostile race to succeed Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte.
Retired boxing star Philippine Senator Manny Pacquiao filed his certificate of candidacy on Friday, and Duterte’s daughter is among others thought likely to seek the presidency in the May 9 elections.
Photo: AFP
The 46-year-old Moreno, who grew up in Manila’s slums and at one point scavenged for food as a child, is expected to bank on his rags-to-power life story, movie-star looks and widely praised projects in Manila, including restoring order in its chaotic streets and public markets.
However, he is up against formidable politicians and celebrities, including whichever candidate Duterte and his ruling party endorses.
“We are too divisive and indecisive; that caused the stomping of our economy on top of the pandemic,” Moreno told reporters. “My countrymen, give me a chance to heal our country for a bright future.”
Duterte’s successor stands to inherit enormous problems led by the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused the country’s worst economic recession, long-entrenched poverty and decades-long communist and Muslim insurgencies.
The next leader would also take over in a politically charged atmosphere, with Duterte facing a possible array of legal cases arising from his brutal anti-drugs crackdown that has left more than 6,000 mostly petty drug suspects dead.
The International Criminal Court is investigating the killings.
The ailing Duterte, 76, on Saturday announced he was retiring from politics and withdrew from an earlier plan to run as vice president under the ruling PDP-Laban party. That decision opened an option for his daughter, Davao Mayor Sara Duterte, to run for the presidency.
Sara Duterte has said she and her father have agreed that only one Duterte would run for a national office next year. She has registered to run for re-election as mayor, but speculation remains rife that she will decide to seek the presidency.
Packed crowds in India celebrating their cricket team’s victory ended in a deadly stampede on Wednesday, with 11 mainly young fans crushed to death, the local state’s chief minister said. Joyous cricket fans had come out to celebrate and welcome home their heroes, Royal Challengers Bengaluru, after they beat Punjab Kings in a roller-coaster Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket final on Tuesday night. However, the euphoria of the vast crowds in the southern tech city of Bengaluru ended in disaster, with Indian Prime Minister Narendra calling it “absolutely heartrending.” Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said most of the deceased are young, with 11 dead
By 2027, Denmark would relocate its foreign convicts to a prison in Kosovo under a 200-million-euro (US$228.6 million) agreement that has raised concerns among non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and residents, but which could serve as a model for the rest of the EU. The agreement, reached in 2022 and ratified by Kosovar lawmakers last year, provides for the reception of up to 300 foreign prisoners sentenced in Denmark. They must not have been convicted of terrorism or war crimes, or have a mental condition or terminal disease. Once their sentence is completed in Kosovan, they would be deported to their home country. In
Brazil, the world’s largest Roman Catholic country, saw its Catholic population decline further in 2022, while evangelical Christians and those with no religion continued to rise, census data released on Friday by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) showed. The census indicated that Brazil had 100.2 million Roman Catholics in 2022, accounting for 56.7 percent of the population, down from 65.1 percent or 105.4 million recorded in the 2010 census. Meanwhile, the share of evangelical Christians rose to 26.9 percent last year, up from 21.6 percent in 2010, adding 12 million followers to reach 47.4 million — the highest figure
LOST CONTACT: The mission carried payloads from Japan, the US and Taiwan’s National Central University, including a deep space radiation probe, ispace said Japanese company ispace said its uncrewed moon lander likely crashed onto the moon’s surface during its lunar touchdown attempt yesterday, marking another failure two years after its unsuccessful inaugural mission. Tokyo-based ispace had hoped to join US firms Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace as companies that have accomplished commercial landings amid a global race for the moon, which includes state-run missions from China and India. A successful mission would have made ispace the first company outside the US to achieve a moon landing. Resilience, ispace’s second lunar lander, could not decelerate fast enough as it approached the moon, and the company has
RSS