RP set to vote with Arroyo the favorite

RP set to vote with Arroyo the favorite

Bill Tarrant, Reuters, Manila

The Philippines votes on Monday after a raucous and dirty three-
month campaign that made the diminutive President Gloria Arroyo a
clear favorite to beat a burly action movie hero to lead a
bitterly divided country.

The five presidential candidates gathered for a "unity" mass
at Manila's oldest church on Sunday, praying for peaceful polls
in the mostly Roman Catholic country, after warnings about
attacks by Muslim rebels and plots to rig the results.

A final independent poll last week gave Arroyo a seven
percentage point lead over her chief rival, Fernando Poe Jr, the
country's most popular actor.

The elections are the third since dictator Ferdinand Marcos
was ousted in a "people power" movement in 1986. Since then, a
series of coup attempts, insurgencies, rampant corruption and
massive vote fraud have tested the young democracy.

Once one of Asia's richest countries, the Philippines is now
among the poorest after a half-century of dictatorship,
corruption and instability.

Muslim rebellions in the south with links to al-Qaeda have
alarmed its neighbors, as well as Washington, which has conducted
extensive training exercises in recent months with the
Philippines military.

"Spare the poor of more suffering," Rosales said in his sermon
at the 16th-century San Augustin church in Manila's old quarter,
calling on the politicians to sacrifice their ambitions to help
build the nation.

"Thus, even the threat or actual use of violence must be bared
for what it is -- a veil to cover up an insatiable appetite for
power," Rosales told the candidates, who held hands during the
communion hymn.

Underlining the archbishop's concern, campaign sources said
vote-buying was in full swing, with some candidates for thousands
of government posts offering local kingpins four to five pesos
(about eight U.S. cents) for every vote they can deliver.

The prospect of widespread cheating and the 12 percent of
voters who say they are undecided means nothing is certain.

Largely ignored during the campaign were the most pressing
issues facing the Philippines, including a debt burden that eats
up a third of government spending, leaving little to elevate some
30 million Filipinos from dire poverty.

"The priest told us not to sell our votes," said Virginia
Lagdan, a housewife in the northern town of Solana. "He said if
you sell your votes, these politicians will no longer serve you
because they've already been paid."

Such advice is likely to go unheeded in much of the country
when local leaders are able to command large blocs of support.

Political wounds are still festering from Arroyo's rise to the
presidency three years ago after huge anti-graft protests ended
the turbulent term of Poe's friend, Joseph Estrada.

Arroyo, a 57-year-old economist and a key Asian ally of the
United States, campaigned as a safer pair of hands to run the
wobbly economy than Poe, who dropped out of school at 15 and
whose laconic pronouncements have unnerved the markets.

Poe, 64, who built a huge following in his roles as defender
of the underdog in more than 240 films, has been losing momentum
for weeks after starting out with a big lead in opinion polls.

The three others running for president -- former police chief
Panfilo Lacson, former education secretary Raul Roco and Eduardo
Villanueva, an evangelist -- are expected to split a third of the
ballots.

Fears of bombings by the al-Qaeda-linked Aby Sayyaf and Jemaah
Islamiyah groups have put security forces are on red alert, and
3,000 troops have been sent to reinforce Manila.

The military says 92 people, including 29 candidates, have
been killed so far -- more than the 87 in the 1998 election but
still less than the nearly 150 who died in local polls in 1988.

Arroyo in a televised message to voters on Sunday, said she
has invited more than a hundred foreign observers

"There would be scattered incidents," former President Fidel
Ramos said. "I'm quite optimistic though that with today's
events, after the unity Mass, everybody will try to avoid poll
violence.