Maniolas

By Ayee Macaraig Presidential candidate Davao City Mayor Rodrigo “Digong” Duterte holds a national flag during a motorcade as he campaigns in Malabon, Thursday. The frontrunner has a double-digit lead based on election surveys released recently with only 10 days left before election day.(MNS photo) Manila, Philippines | AFP | Monday 5/9/2016 – Anti-establishment firebrand Rodrigo Duterte stormed to a huge win in the Philippine presidential elections, according to poll monitor data released Tuesday, after an incendiary campaign dominated by his profanity-laced vows to kill criminals. Duterte, the longtime mayor of the southern city of Davao, hypnotized millions with his vows of brutal but quick solutions to the nation’s twin plagues of crime and poverty, which many believed had worsened despite strong economic growth in recent years. And after a record turnout of voters in Monday’s elections, Duterte scored a commanding victory, according to data released by the PPCRV, a Catholic Church-run poll monitor accredited by the government to tally the votes. A few hours later, Duterte told AFP on Tuesday he would “accept the mandate of the people”, as polling data showed he had won the Philippine presidential election. “It’s with humility, extreme humility, that I accept this, the mandate of the people,” Duterte said in the southern city of Davao, which he has ruled as mayor for most of the past two decades. With 89 percent of the vote counted early on Tuesday morning, Duterte had an insurmountable lead of 5.92 million votes over his nearest rival, administration candidate Mar Roxas, according to Read More …

By Christopher Lloyd T. Caliwan Nuns vote MANILA, May 9 (PNA) – Despite some recorded incidents of glitches in vote counting machines (VCMs), the National Capital Region Police Office (NCRPO) said Monday’s polls in the metropolis has been “generally peaceful.” NCRPO Chief Police Director Joel Pagdilao told the Philippines News Agency that the people were able to go to polling centers and were able to cast their votes, noting that such incidents are “very isolated in nature” and did not hamper the conduct of the election process. “In Metro Manila so far the election also generally peaceful and there still full alert status,” Pagdilao said in a phone interview. He said that as of 5:00 p.m. Monday, a total of 71 persons were arrested due to liquor ban and expected to be lifted before midnight. President Benigno S. Aquino III leads the 52 million Filipino registered voters in casting the vote for the 2016 elections at precinct 175-A at the Central Azucarera de Tarlac Elementary School in Barangay San Miguel, Tarlac City on Monday (May 09). (MNS photo) For her part, Southern Police District (SPD) spokesperson Jenny Tecson said that an election supervisor in Pasay City reported that a vote counting machine failed to issue vote receipts in one polling precinct in Park Avenue Cuneta Elementary School. She said the Board of Election Inspectors recommended to the local Commission on Elections to have it replaced. In Las Pinas City, another defective machine was reported in Pamplona Tres around 1:00 p.m. Read More …

Only 17 out of the 66 national candidates attended the signing of the Truthful, Responsible, Upright, Transparent, & Honest (TRUTH) covenant spearheaded by the Archdiocese of Manila and its radio network, Radio Veritas, on Monday (May 2, 2016). According to Fr. Anton Pascual, Radio Veritas president, they have sent invitations to each of the candidates running for the presidential, vice presidential and senatorial seats but many of them were not available as they were in their respective campaign sorties. Left and middle photos show Liberal Party standard-bearer Manuel “Mar” Roxas II and Vice President Jejomar Binay signing the peace covenant for the May 9 elections at the Manila Cathedral. (PNA photos by Avito C. Dalan) MANILA  (Mabuhay) – The camp of Vice President Jejomar Binay on Thursday advised other presidential candidates not to celebrate yet amid their rise in the surveys. “To the other candidates: Do not celebrate yet, good things are about to happen, Binay is coming,” lawyer Rico Quicho, the Vice President’s spokesperson, said in a press statement. “It will be a tight race all the way to Election Day,” he added. He said the surveys do not capture the intense ground campaigning by the Vice President’s core supporters and parallel groups nationwide. “These efforts have intensified after April 29 which was the last day of the surveys. The final visibility push this week via motorcades, house to house campaign and sectoral events like the Indigenous People’s summit for Binay in Cagayan de Oro last Tuesday showed the Read More …

Quezon City – By next week, the Philippines will have a new president that will hopefully address the endemic problems the country has been dealing for a long period of time that includes poverty, crime, corruption and unemployment. People are hoping that their next president will be able to rally and unite the fragmented Filipinos into one nation so that it can move on and progress economically like its neighboring Asian countries. Most often than not the country for so many years has been unable to attain economic progress due to partisan politics and pervasive corruption in all corridors of the government. Ever since the downfall of the Marcos regime, the country has not so far attained the economic growth every president after Marcos has envisioned in order for the government to at least improve the lives of millions of destitute Filipinos, particularly those living in far-flung provinces. By Monday, May 9, on election day here in the Philippines, Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte appears to be the top choice of most Filipinos to be their next president. Most people that I have talked with, from taxi drivers, restaurant workers, sales workers as well as jeepney and tricycle drivers and young college students, are all rooting for a Duterte presidency. They all have the same answer when asked why Duterte. They want radical change. They said they are tired of all the empty promises of traditional politicians who do nothing to improve the lives of the “common tao.” The frustrations, Read More …

Commission on Election Chairman Andres Bautista demonstrates the function of a vote-counting machine (VCM), which will be used for the May 9 national and local elections, at a warehouse in Sta. Rosa, Laguna, Thursday. The machines are currently undergoing Hardware Acceptance Test (HAT).(MNS photo) MANILA  (PNA) – The Commission on Elections (Comelec) said the proclamation of winning senators may be close to the announcement made in the 2013 polls. Comelec Spokesperson James Jimenez noted that the names of the new lawmakers may be known three days after Election Day. “In my estimates, we will not be far from the 72 hours (in 2013),” he said. In the midterm elections, the first six winning senators were proclaimed three days after the elections while with the next three proclaimed a day later and the final three the next day. On the other hand, Jimenez added that it was more important for them to have credible and transparent results in the May 9 polls than beating the previous records in proclaiming winning candidates at the soonest possible time. “We are not looking at any previous performance as a hard target. We are looking at previous performance as benchmarks to improve upon. If we add more procedures or change procedures and they end up being a little more complex or complicated or similar even, that all goes into the determination of whether or not the results are credible,” he said. Jimenez added, “What’s important is that the procedures that we adopt are shown to Read More …