Aquino prepares for Philippines presidency

Benigno Aquino III is today preparing to become the next Philippines president based on an almost-complete vote count in landmark elections.

He has started assembling his team of cabinet members as he aims to crack down on corruption and some of Asia’s most violent rebellions.

Mr Aquino – whose father was assassinated while opposing Ferdinand Marcos’s dictatorship and whose mother led the 1986 “people power” revolt that restored democracy – was leading Monday’s nine-way presidential race with 41.8% of votes from about 88.56% of the precincts, according to a government-accredited watchdog.

His closest rival, ousted president Joseph Estrada, had 26.5%, the group said.

The Commission on Elections stopped updating the media on the result of the presidential race after lawyers of some candidates protested, saying a congressional count scheduled for May 24 could be pre-empted, Elections Commissioner Lucenito Tagle said.

Only Congress can proclaim the winner for president and vice president.

Mr Aquino will inherit a nation grappling with poverty – a third of about 90 million Filipinos lives on $1 a day – and debilitated by decades-long Marxist and Muslim insurgencies, military unrest, corruption, violent crime and political strife.

“Our country badly needs this shot in the arm,” said Corazon Soliman, the first to accept a cabinet post from Mr Aquino. “We have been given a second chance to do this right.”

Ms Soliman defected, along with several other cabinet members, from Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s administration in July 2005 amid a vote-rigging scandal that nearly forced her from power. Ms

Soliman and her colleagues have called for Ms Arroyo’s resignation and backed Mr Aquino.

A committee will help Mr Aquino form a cabinet before he takes his oath on June 30, selecting people “with integrity, honesty and no track record of corrupt practices”, Ms Soliman said.

Mr Aquino said Ms Soliman accepted his offer to return to the Department of Social Welfare and Development. He repeated a campaign promise to use his first days in the presidency to wage a battle against corruption.

“I will not only not steal, but I’ll have the corrupt arrested,” the 50-year-old told reporters in his first comments since Monday’s polls. Massive corruption has long dogged the Philippines, tainting electoral politics and skimming billions off public funds in a country already struggling to pay off a huge foreign debt.

Mr Aquino said he will avoid foreign trips and trim his cabinet. During her nine years in power, Ms Arroyo enlarged her cabinet to more than 40 heads of departments and agencies.

Mr Aquino said his government will focus on combating smuggling and cleaning up the notoriously corrupt Bureau of Customs and other revenue-generating agencies.

Teresita Deles, who also defected from Arroyo in 2005, said Mr Aquino will immediately reconstitute a peace talks panel negotiating with communist New People’s Army rebels, who have been waging a rural-based Marxist rebellion since the late 1960s, and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which is fighting for Muslim self-rule in the southern Philippines.

The negotiations had both stalled under Ms Arroyo.