Arroyo urges unity after violent elections

Arroyo urges unity after violent elections

MANILA (AP): With administration candidates slightly leading exit polls and very early counts, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo called for national unity on Tuesday after deadly, divisive local and congressional elections.

"Let's be united again. It's time for healing," Arroyo said, a day after elections seen as a power struggle between her and the man she replaced and helped oust, jailed former President Joseph Estrada.

An exit poll by Social Weather Stations pollsters released late on Tuesday showed Arroyo's candidates could grab eight of the 13 key Senate seats, with four going to opposition and the other to an independent.

But opposition senators, according to the survey of 5,446 voters with a margin of error of 1.5 percent, could include Estrada's wife, Loi Ejercito, a moderate opposition senator and two men Arroyo accuses of plotting to violently oust her.

Asked if "healing" could include those two, former national police chief Panfilo Lacson and Sen. Gregorio Honasan, running for re-election, Arroyo said she would "pray about it."

Arroyo said Honasan and Lacson instigated violence on May 1 when 50,000 Estrada supporters, angered by his April 25 arrest on corruption charges, stormed the presidential palace. At least six died and more than 100 were wounded as security forces fought them off.

Tuesday morning, gunmen killed a policeman during a ballot box heist and suspected rebels abducted a mayoral candidate as officials continued the plodding process of gathering and counting 30 million ballots, many of them from jungle villages and remote mountain towns on the Philippines' 7,107 islands.

Gunfights, arson at polling stations and attacks on rallies during and after Monday's vote brought political killings to 73 since campaigning began in January for 17,600 local, provincial and congressional posts. No conclusive results are expected for days.

Assailants who killed a policeman with automatic rifles on Tuesday made off with completed ballots from two precincts in Santa Ana town, in the Philippines' extreme north, police said.

Since the vote, armed men burned ballot boxes in two central Philippine towns and attackers firing from a motorboat injured three people in a rally in a coastal municipality. Supporters of rival candidates exchanged gunfire in more than a dozen villages and towns from north to south.

Police Supt. Rojillo Montijo said suspected communist rebels abducted Mayor Zemaida Doria, who had run for re-election in Mayorja town, some 600 kilometers southeast of Manila.

Montijo said the New People's Army, which is fighting to install Marxism and claims to serve as vigilantes against crime in some rural areas, had accused Doria of corruption. Besides violence, missing ballot boxes and incomplete voter lists plagued parts of the country. Turnout was estimated at 85 percent of the 36.1 million voters.

An unofficial count by the private National Citizens Movement for Free Elections, with less than 2 percent of votes counted, also showed eight administration candidates winning.

Archbishop Antonio Quevedo, of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, called on authorities to consider election reform to counter violence and greater computerization to ensure fairness.

"I think there is a need to reevaluate the elections, why there is so much elections violence and elections cheating," Quevedo said.

He also asked the government to treat Estrada with "more dignity" and suggested the former leader should be detained in his suburban Manila mansion instead of his remote detention center south of the capital.

Rival camps insisted they did well in the crucial race for 13 of the 24 Senate seats being filled in the elections held just four months after Estrada fled the presidential palace amid massive street protests.

Arroyo needs a strong showing for a credibility boost following the prolonged crisis over corruption allegations against Estrada that severely strained the nation's political system.

Estrada has sought from jail to rally support for opposition figures in hopes that gains by his allies, including his wife, Loi Ejercito, will bolster his claim that he was ousted illegally.

Shares on the Philippine Stock Exchange fell 1.8 percent Tuesday amid the scattered violence and the expected long wait for elections results. The peso inched ahead against the U.S. dollar, closing at 50.18 to the dollar compared with 50.30 at the close on Friday.

Some analysts were surprised at the market's lackluster start, after predicting stocks and the peso would rise following elections.

Estrada and his son Jinggoy, both jailed on plunder charges, voted from hospital where they are being treated for minor illnesses developed in detention.

Estrada, accused of pocketing US$82 million in payoffs while in office, has claimed he is still the legitimate leader.