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.