Publisher's Note

Publisher’s Note
By C.K. Good day to all our readers! I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving with their families and friends. Back home 20 years ago, I never remembered celebrating Thanksgiving. Turkey dinner was not a tradition but instead we have our very own lechon manok, which is just equivalent of something more affordable than turkey. But [...]
Read full post »

Visitors to Pinoytimes

Start of StatCounter Code

End of StatCounter Code

Page added on May 19, 2016

Email This Post Printable version

Print This Post

Duterte Heads for Landslide

DAVAO CITY—Even before the polls closed on Monday afternoon, Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte offered “reconciliation and healing” to his rivals in the race for Malacañang, which he appeared to have won.

Duterte was leading his rivals Sen. Grace Poe, Mar Roxas, Vice President Jejomar Binay and Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago by a wide margin in the early count of the presidential vote.

The vice presidential race was seen as a head-to-head contest between Sen. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. and the administration’s Leni Robredo.

As of 9:36 p.m., the son of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos had 10,661,930 votes and Robredo, 9,771,606 votes.

“I would like to reach my hand to my opponents. Let us begin the healing of the land,” Duterte said in a talk with reporters immediately after he voted at Daniel Aguinaldo High School in Matina District here.

He said his offer of healing covered “everyone,” including his main tormentor, Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV, a vice presidential candidate who accused him of concealing millions of pesos in undisclosed bank accounts and sued him in the Office of the Ombudsman, alleging that he charged for 11,000 nonexistent employees of the Davao municipal government as the campaign drew to a close last week.

Duterte described the attacks during the campaign as “virulent,” causing the candidates pain, especially those who were hit with what he called “black propaganda.”

“If you don’t accept the goodwill, that is fine,” Duterte said, slipping back to the thuggish posture that he used to portray himself as a trash-talking, antiestablishment politician to capture the admiration of millions of ordinary voters, who abandoned the leading candidates and put him at the head of the race in the last few days of the campaign.

Rivals alarmed

His promises to kill tens of thousands of suspected criminals outside the justice system, abolish Congress and declare a revolutionary government if lawmakers refuse to back his policies or move for his impeachment if found guilty of mass murder have alarmed rivals, who warned that he was a dictator in the making.

Duterte’s expletive-laden speeches, including a talk with reporters in which he called the Pope a “son of a bitch,” and insensitive talk, such as joking at a campaign rally that he had wanted to have been the first to rape an Australian missionary who was gang-raped and murdered in a jailhouse riot in Davao in 1989, did not dent his popularity but instead seemed to have made him more popular to voters.

As the vote came on Monday, it was clear that he was the man to beat in the race for the presidency and in the early count of the vote, he appeared to be headed toward a landslide.

Source: inquirer.net

Duterte Heads for Landslide

pinoytimes.ca © 2009