Alert over Philippines election 'revolt' threat

Security forces in the Philippines were on red alert today as President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo declared she had a new mandate to govern after the final election tally showed her winning by 1.1m votes.

But the opposition disputed the result and the military was on alert for any plots to destabilise the country.

Supporters of action film star Fernando Poe – who have warned of a “people power” revolt – claim their candidate was cheated out of some two million votes from the May 10 presidential election and say their fraud claims are being ignored.

The official tally was announced yesterday following a bitter six-week vote count by a committee of MPs. The result paves the way for the full Congress to proclaim Arroyo the winner, but the opposition says it will seek to block the move.

“This has been the most contentious canvassing perhaps in Philippine history,” House Speaker Jose de Venecia said.

“People power” revolts ousted dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 1986 and President Joseph Estrada in 2001.

Arroyo took over midway through Estrada’s six-year term and sought an electoral mandate to continue economic and other reforms in the poor south-east Asian nation that is one of Washington’s closest allies.

“This is a sad time in the history of our country,” Poe’s party said in a statement. “What the majority in Congress has done is to abort the truth in the womb of our sacred electoral process.”

It said pro-Arroyo MPs used their superior numbers in Congress to prevent the opposition from presenting evidence of electoral fraud.

Arroyo spokesman Ignacio Bunye countered that despite the delays, “the orderly processes set by our laws have ensured that the will of the people has prevailed”.

The opposition said it would question the committee’s report on the count later this week. It also could file a protest, after the proclamation, to the Supreme Court election tribunal, though that would probably take years to resolve.

The congressional committee worked through the weekend and finally finished counting the last of 176 provincial summaries of votes, called certificates of canvass, yesterday.

The final tally had Arroyo with 12,905,808 votes and Poe with 11,782,232, a difference of 1,123,576.

Three other candidates were well behind.

Arroyo’s vice presidential running mate, popular news anchor Noli de Castro, also won, according to the House-Senate committee tasked with counting the races for the country’s top two offices.

In recent weeks, opposition MPs and lawyers have claimed that several vote certificates appeared to have been altered to rob Poe of up to two million votes.