Ferdinand Marcos Jr. seems poised to be the next president of the Philippines as millions began voting Monday, under the watchful eye of thousands of security forces after the violence claimed four lives over the weekend.
According to a recent opinion poll, the 64-year-old namesake, the son of a deposed dictator, will win more than half the vote to become the first presidential candidate to win an absolute majority in decades.
The poll, published last Monday, showed he voted 56%, well ahead of his main rival, incumbent Vice President Lenny Robredo, who was 23% away.
Popularly known as Bongbong, Marcos Jr. is the son of former President Ferdinand Marcos Sr., who ruled the country with an iron fist for two decades until he was ousted in 1986 after mass protests. During the campaign, Marcos tried to reshape his father’s legacy as comparable to the family of former US President John F. Kennedy in his splendor.
Robredo, a 57-year-old lawyer and economist, will need low turnout or a late influx of support to achieve disorder.
Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. is expected to emerge victorious in the Philippine presidential election, where voters are queuing up Monday in front of a polling station in Batak, Ilocos Norte province.
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77-year-old outgoing President Rodrigo Duterte is constitutionally barred from running for a second term. He did not support any candidate, but his daughter Sarah is a candidate for Bongbong Marcos.
The Philippines will also elect a vice president, senators, lower house and provincial lawmakers, as well as local officials in polls estimated to attract about 65.7 million registered voters in the country and 1.69 million more abroad, local media reported. citing data from an election commission.
More than 50% of voters are between the ages of 18 and 41, which means they have no memory of the brutal rule of Marcos Sr. because they were either not born or too young to understand mass prisons, torture and other abuses. that era.
After six years of hard-line rule in Duterte, during which the country witnessed a brutal war on drugs, there are widespread fears that the convincing victory of the younger Marcos could portend a return to authoritarian rule. Both Bongbong and Sarah Duterte said they were best qualified to “unite” the country.
Elections in the Philippines are often marked by violence. Four people were killed in a shootout between mayoral candidates in the northern province of Ilocos Sur on Saturday. Three security guards were also killed in the municipality of Boulogne on the troubled island of Mindanao in the southern Philippines on Monday, when gunmen opened fire on a polling station, according to AFP.
There were a total of 16 election-related incidents of violence during this campaign, fewer than in 2016 and 2019. More than 60,000 security officers were deployed to protect polling stations and election workers.
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