Tag: Noynoy

Philippine presidential candidates seek edge in intensifying race – Nikkei Asian Review

BACOOR, Philippines — In a packed basketball arena in the province of Cavite, a half-hour’s drive south of the congested capital, Manila, Senator Grace Poe made her pitch to lead the Philippines as the country’s next president. “There is a long history of Cavitenos watching movies of my father and they remember that,” she said, referring to her famous adoptive father, the late film actor Ferdinand Poe, who ran unsuccessfully for president in 2004. Rather than featuring established, ideologically-driven political parties with slick campaign machines, Philippine elections are dominated by political dynasties, with a list of household names decorated with a smattering of celebrities, be they TV stars or sports icons such as world champion boxer Manny Pacquaio, who is running for a senate seat. Poe, with her cinema star father, has the background to match, and is not afraid to play it up in the quest for an edge in this close-run race.

Philippines votes in the shadow of gunmen – Asia Times

MANILA — By April 14, the latest date for which figures are available, 38 election candidates had been killed during the January to mid-April campaign period, according to Felix Vargas, spokesman for the government’s task force on elected government officials. The figure does not include campaign workers and candidates’ assistants who were killed. Professor Rommel C Banlaoi, the director of the Philippine Institute for Peace, Violence and Terrorism Research (PIPVTR), told Asia Times Online that “cases of election related killings from the use of illegally armed groups have been recorded and to date numbers more than 100” The Maguindanao atrocity was the largest recorded mass killing of journalists in a single incident. The massacre was carried out to deter an opposition clan, the Mangudadatu family, from running in the elections against the government-backed Ampatuan clan. This case and other, less well-known clashes in the southern Philippines and elsewhere illustrate how elections raise the stakes for volatile local bigwig rivalries