RP vote was flawed but credible, says Arroyo

RP vote was flawed but credible, says Arroyo

Mynardo Macaraig, Agence France-Presse/Manila

Philippines President Gloria Arroyo on Thursday conceded there were flaws in this week's elections she is projected to win, but said the problems were isolated and warned the opposition against stirring up trouble.

Reacting to criticism by international observers on the level of violence in the campaign that claimed more than 100 lives, Arroyo said the bloodshed was "relatively isolated and has not affected the generally peaceful and credible character of the polls."

She acknowledged there were problems in Monday's vote, which exit polls predict she would win by a comfortable margin of three million votes over main rival and movie-star Fernando Poe.

"It is sad to note that many of our people and their leaders ... have engaged in the use of force to get their way," she said in a statement.

Arroyo also called for modernization of the electoral process to speed up the count "and remove the tensions that contribute to problems of peace and order."

Poe and other opposition candidates have charged that they had been cheated in the elections and that the government was using the media and unofficial surveys and vote counts to put out misleading results to make it look like Arroyo was already the winner.

Results of the manual vote count are expected to take weeks but an exit poll by the independent Social Weather Stations group predicted Arroyo would win 41 percent of the vote compared with 32 percent for Poe.

Arroyo spokesman Ignacio Bunye denied the government was trying to convince the public Arroyo had already beaten Poe, telling reporters, "nobody's saying anybody has won."

A government sanctioned "quick count" by the independent watchdog body, the National Citizens Movement for Free Elections, said that as of 0100 GMT (8 a.m. in Jakarta) on Wednesday, with less than 6 percent of the votes counted, Poe was slightly ahead with 692,499 votes to Arroyo's 675,439 votes.

Opposition leaders say their followers are gathering affidavits from people who were not allowed to vote, to be used in filing election protests.

Deposed president Joseph Estrada, who had backed Poe, urged opposition supporters to take to the streets.

"They're stealing the victory from FPJ (Poe's initials). It's about time that people held protests in the streets to denounce massive cheating," he said.

Estrada, a former movie star, is in detention on corruption charges after being deposed by a military-backed uprising in January 2001 that allowed then-vice-president Arroyo to take the presidency.

Thousands of Poe supporters massed in Manila's financial district on Tuesday to denounce alleged cheating but the protest ended peacefully.

Bunye said Manila would exercise "maximum tolerance against protest actions," but also warned the government would "apply the full force of the law against those who undermine our electoral processes or the political order."

Even before the vote count is completed, Arroyo announced she would meet with her cabinet on Friday to discuss how to implement the campaign promises she made before the election.

"It is obviously to condition the public that she is winning but we have to wait for the result," said opposition spokesman Rodolfo Reyes.

Monday's presidential, legislative and local elections have been marred by numerous complaints that many people were left off the voters' list or could not find their voting precincts.

There have also been scattered reports of violence during the campaign. The military released figures Thursday showing 141 people were killed and 192 wounded in election-related violence since December, mostly by communist insurgents and private armed gangs of political warlords.

Mary Carol Jennings, an American election observer, condemned "the cheating ... the armed men using intimidation (and) the laxity with which the national and local (Commission on Elections) officials handle such an important national function."