Big rallies to mark campaign in RP

Big rallies to mark campaign in RP

Election season in the Philippines kicks off on Tuesday with huge rallies and motorcades planned as a two-way presidential race shapes up between film star Fernando Poe Jr. and incumbent Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

As usual, personalities are likely to win out over policies at the ballot box on May 10, but analysts are warning Filipinos they can expect some of the worst violence and nasty tricks in the unruly democracy's history.

Two dozen people have been killed since hopefuls for 17,000 national, regional and local posts began registering in December, police say. Rivalries are often most intense at town level, where kickbacks reward officials for delivering blocs of support.

"It's not just political survival. It has become personal," said political analyst Earl Parreno.

Arroyo is playing up continuity and the best bits of her reforms. Despite her limited success at containing corruption, reviving the economy and getting state finances in order, financial analysts tend to see Arroyo as the most palatable pick.

Poe, an action movie hero and close friend of deposed president Joseph Estrada, also boasts the personal recognition and powerful connections that are vital in this nation of islands divided by distance, language and levels of development.

Poe's lack of political experience has pushed up investor uncertainty and weakened the peso, but even his acknowledgment of a love child with a starlet is unlikely to dent his popularity and image for integrity among the film-loving lower classes.

Dirty tricks so far include rumors of a plot against Arroyo, again raising the specter of a restive military after about 300 soldiers mutinied in July and generals backed protests that ousted dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 1986 and Estrada in 2001.

Arroyo's critics also question her right to lead in the first place, saying her rise from vice president three years ago was a coup engineered by a small elite threatened by Estrada's huge support from the poor masses. He had won the last election, in 1998, by a record margin.

Plans for an electronic vote-counting system have been abandoned after a shambles over bidding by machine manufacturers, meaning that the election commission must fall back on the traditional method of tallying ballots by hand. -- Reuters