« on: May 07, 2010, 05:28:35 AM »
Aquino leads survey ahead of Philippine vote By TERESA CEROJANO,Associated Press Writer - Friday, May 7
MANILA, Philippines – Sen. Benigno Aquino III, the son of Philippine democracy icons and a campaigner against corruption, has cemented his lead in an independent survey published Friday ahead of next week's presidential vote.
The polls will go ahead Monday after the Elections Commission rushed to fix a massive computer glitch, traced to a human error, which led to the recall and reconfiguration of memory cards in the optical counting machines in all of the archipelago's 76,300 precincts.
The potentially disastrous problem, discovered during last-minute testing, has fed suspicion of high-tech vote-rigging in the country's first automated elections. The poll body rejected a call by six presidential candidates, including Aquino, for a parallel manual count in case of a machine failure.
Aquino led the Social Weather Stations' May 2-3 poll with the support of 42 percent of 2,400 adult respondents, 22 points over ousted President Joseph Estrada with 20 percent and fellow opposition senator and the country's richest politician, Manny Villar, with 19 percent.
The survey has a margin of error of 2 percentage points.
"It looks like a one-man show leading to a landslide," political analyst Ramon Casiple told The Associated Press. Aquino "has been able to get more support on top of his core constituency coming from the other candidates and the undecided," he said.
Aquino, 50, a quiet lawmaker who served three terms in the House of Representatives and entered the Senate in 2007, decided to join the race only in September, after the death of his mother, democracy icon and former President Corazon Aquino, sparked an outpouring of national grief.
Aquino has anchored his campaign on running a clean government and restoring the credibility of the judiciary and Congress.
Analysts say his rise reflects the public's longing to fill a moral vacuum in a country plagued by corruption, poverty and violence. For many voters, it's been nearly a quarter century of disappointment since Corazon Aquino toppled dictator Ferdinand Marcos and ushered in democracy.
Aquino's father, an opposition senator, was shot to death in 1983 while in military custody on the tarmac of Manila's airport as he returned from U.S. exile to challenge Marcos.
Villar, 60, who made his fortune in real estate before he was elected in Congress, has tried to woo voters with aggressive campaigning touting his rags-to-riches story. Early on, he was neck-and-neck with Aquino in opinion polls, but then lost support amid allegations by rivals that he used his clout to increase his wealth and exaggerated his life story.
Estrada, a 73-year-old former movie star, overtook Villar as No. 2 in the surveys. Although hugely popular among the nation's poor _ a third of the population live on a dollar a day _ Estrada is still seen tainted by his removal from the presidency in a 2001 revolt and his subsequent conviction on corruption charges. He was later pardoned by his nemesis, the outgoing President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.
Scattered political violence has already claimed dozens of lives before 50 million Filipino voters Monday elect a new president, vice president and officials to fill nearly 18,000 national and local posts.