Voting was under way in the Philippines on Monday in mid-term elections seen as a referendum on the rule of maverick President Rodrigo Duterte, who looks set to strengthen his grip on power and further marginalise a dwindling opposition.Nearly 62 million of the country\u2019s 107 million population are registered to vote in a massive nationwide ballot for 18,000 posts, among them more than 200 mayors and governors and 245 seats in a lower house in which Duterte is all but certain to retain his huge majority.
The most important race is for the 12 available slots in the 24-seat Senate, a less-partisan chamber until now seen as a crucial check on power and a bulwark against the Duterte administration\u2019s political dominance.Opinion polls indicate that candidates backed by Duterte will prevail, the latest putting 11 or 12 of his allies among the 15 seen as having a chance. Only one opposition candidate was among the 15, demonstrating what analysts say is Duterte\u2019s growing clout and an opposition struggling with relevance, cohesion and leadership.
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He has built on that to boost the latter half of \nhis presidency, bringing on board household names and recruiting a \npowerful surrogate in his daughter Sara Duterte, in what is being seen \nas an early succession move.
A Senate majority and opposition \nabsence would allow his allies to horse-trade with independents, \nlessening the chance of censure and Senate probes, and making it easier \nto pass controversial legislation like restoring capital punishment, and\n changing the constitution to introduce federalism, and possibly extend \nterm limits.
There were no indications of significant violence on\n poll day, but there were widespread reports of vote-buying and \nbreakdowns in electronic voting machines.Duterte won the 2016 \npresidential election by a big margin as an alternative candidate and a \nno-nonsense newcomer on a national stage traditionally held by Manila \nelites, powerful dynasties or famous politicians tainted by scandals.
Experts\n say the dominance of social media space by his administration and his \nsupporters has made Duterte almost untouchable, despite a war on drugs \nthat has killed thousands of people, accusations of misogyny and \ninsulting the church, last year\u2019s spirally inflation, and indifference \ntowards rival China\u2019s militarisation in the South China Sea.
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Voting was under way in the Philippines on Monday in mid-term elections seen as a referendum on the rule of maverick President Rodrigo Duterte, who looks set to strengthen his grip on power and further marginalise a dwindling opposition.Nearly 62 million of the country\u2019s 107 million population are registered to vote in a massive nationwide […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":61194,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61193"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61195,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61193\/revisions\/61195"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}