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.