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| Southeast Asia |
| Benigno Aquino favourite as Philippines polls open |
| 2010-05-10 |
| Forty million Filipinos are expected to turn up at polling stations to elect a successor to President Gloria Arroyo, whose near decade-long rule has been tarnished by allegations of corruption. Mr Aquino's main rivals are former president Joseph Estrada, 73, and property magnate Manny Villar, 60. Two major independent surveys gave Aquino voter support of between 39 and 42 percent, a two-to-one lead over his challengers that places him on course for the biggest win in Philippine election history. The frontrunner is the only son of former president Corazon Aquino and her assassinated husband, Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino, who are revered by many for spearheading the restoration of Philippine democracy in the 1980s. Mr Villar is counting on a nationwide political machinery to help him pull off a shock win, while former movie star Mr Estrada retains strong support among the poor even after he was deposed as president in 2001 for being corrupt. There are also fears a quick result could be jeopardised by cheating or technological problems. The Philippines is using computers for the first time to tally the votes in a bid to minimise the risk of cheating and to quicken the counting process that took weeks when done manually. But glitches discovered in the week before the election - memory cards to be used in the computers were found to be configured incorrectly - fuelled fears about the credibility of the vote. Election officials insisted on Sunday they had been able to replace enough of the memory cards to ensure the vote could go ahead. |
| Posted by:lotp |