Arroyo faces doubts as Philippine count nears end

Arroyo faces doubts as Philippine count nears end

Stuart Grudgings
Reuters/Manila

A marathon count of votes from the Philippines' May 10 elections
neared its end on Sunday with President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo
on course for victory, but the opposition said it would not
accept a "railroaded" result.

The opposition, led by film star Fernando Poe Jr., plans
demonstrations this week to protest against what it says was
widespread cheating in Arroyo's favor, raising concern she might
start a new term dogged by legitimacy doubts.

By early on Sunday afternoon, a congressional panel had
counted 168 out of 176 vote summaries with Arroyo on 12.24
million votes and leading her closest challenger, Poe, by over
910,000. Her running mate, former TV newsreader Noli de Castro,
was on course for the vice-presidency with a lead of more than
one million.

The 22-member panel, dominated by Arroyo supporters, planned
to finish the canvassing within the day, opening the way for
Arroyo to be declared winner by a Congress vote later this week
after 13 days of wrangling between lawmakers.

Sunday newspapers quoted Arroyo, a U.S.-trained economist, as
saying she was going ahead with plans for her inauguration
ceremony before a June 30 deadline, but opposition politicians
said she would be a "bogus" president unless their doubts over
the vote were addressed.

"President Arroyo's allies can now run their express train
faster to railroad the canvass and proclamation, but it will be a
bogus proclamation," opposition senator Edgardo Angara told the
Philippine Star newspaper.

Opposition lawmakers have delayed the canvass, demanding that
election returns be re-opened to examine what they say are
discrepancies in the results. Administration members have
refused, saying the counting must be completed by June 30, when
Arroyo's term ends, to avoid a constitutional crisis.

More than five weeks after the poll, Filipinos are exasperated
by the drawn-out process as fragile investor confidence in the
country sags, but many people believe that the opposition has a
right to demand closer scrutiny.

"In 2001, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo became president without the
benefit of a popular mandate," political commentator Randy David
wrote in the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

"In 2004, her claim to the presidency is even more dubious; it
totters on the edge of unopened electoral returns."

The opposition is still bitter after Arroyo assumed the
presidency on the back of huge anti-graft protests that toppled
Joseph Estrada, another film star and a close friend of Poe.

Hopes that her presidency would signal a new era of economic
and political stability were quickly dampened as she faced
constant opposition sniping and only scored piecemeal success in
her efforts to stamp out entrenched corruption and poverty.

Investors and business leaders had hoped the May election
would give Arroyo her first real mandate and a further six years
in which she would push through reforms more forcefully.

The peso swooned near its all-time low of 56.45 to the dollar
last week and Manila stocks have been subdued for weeks by the
political uncertainty, fueled by rumors that the opposition is
planning protests and coup attempts.

But the military, which has spawned nine coup attempts in the
past 18 years, appears to be calm, and there are few signs of the
popular fury that toppled Estrada in 2001 and dictator Ferdinand
Marcos in 1986.