Estrada maintains big lead in Philippine presidential race

Estrada maintains big lead in Philippine presidential race

MANILA (AP): President Fidel Ramos said yesterday he has
invited Vice President Joseph Estrada and other candidates to
discuss charges of fraud in the Philippines' presidential
election and ways to ease conflicts hampering the vote count.

Estrada, the main opposition candidate, maintained his strong
lead after 67 percent of the votes had been counted, a poll
watchdog group said.

Estrada's party and business groups have expressed strong
concern about the extremely slow pace of counting votes from last
Monday's elections and warned it could allow extensive fraud.

Estrada's vice presidential running mate, Edgardo Angara, has
protested the delays to the head of the government's election
commission.

Angara said their party, called the Struggle of the
Nationalist Filipino Masses, had information that some ruling
party officials were telling election personnel in some districts
to halt the count. That would allow fraud, he said.

Bernardo Pardo, chairman of the election commission, has said
he has ordered election personnel to speed up the count.
Ramos said in a statement he has invited Estrada and other
candidates to discuss the charges along with possible ways of
speeding up the count.

Ramos said he hoped the meeting, scheduled today at the
presidential palace, would "cool down the fires of conflict and
divisiveness" caused by the elections, the statement said.

Representatives of Roman Catholic Church leaders and officials
of the National Movement for Free Elections, or Namfrel, an
elections watchdog group accredited to do an unofficial "quick
count," were also invited.

With 18,447,042 ballots counted, or about 67.65 percent of the
total votes cast, Estrada was winning with about 37 percent,
Namfrel said.

Ramos' hand-picked candidate, House Speaker Jose de Venecia,
was far behind in second place with about 15 percent, followed by
Sen. Raul Roco with 14 percent. The presidential candidate with
the most votes wins outright.

For vice president, elected separately, ruling party candidate
Sen. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo remained on top with about 44
percent of the votes.

Angara was a distant second with about 19 percent.

The Commission on Elections estimates that some 80 percent of
the 34 million registered voters participated in Monday's polls.
Ballots must be counted by hand, and with 17,510 positions at
stake in the nationwide general elections, final results are not
expected for about two weeks.

Several of the 10 candidates that ran to succeed Ramos have
conceded, including Former Defense Secretary Renato de Villa,
Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile and Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim.

Ramos' six-year term ends on June 30 and he is
constitutionally barred from seeking re-election.