More than 18,000 posts are at stake, including half of the seats in the upper house Senate.
Voting has closed in Philippines’ election for legislators and local executives that is expected to strengthen President Rodrigo Duterte’s hold on power halfway into his term.
More than 61 million Filipinos are registered to vote in the midterm polls, with roughly 43,000 candidates vying for some 18,000 government posts.
“It was fairly easy and convenient,” John Binalla, a young IT employee, said after casting his vote at a public elementary school in Mandaluyong City, a suburb of the capital, Manila.
The Commission on Elections declared the voting to have been “generally successful” and without major problems all over the country of more than 7,000 islands. It did report that at least 400 of some 85,000 computerised ballot scanners encountered glitches.
The highest positions at stake are 12 seats in the Senate to recompose half of the higher congressional chamber already dominated by senators allied or supportive of Duterte’s administration.
Voter preference surveys by private pollsters predict a favourable outcome for the administration, with its senatorial candidates poised to win up to two-thirds of the contested seats.
Although mostly supportive of Duterte, the current Senate has so far tempered his more polarising objectives, such as reinstating the death penalty or redrafting the constitution to change the form of government from unitary to federal – a move that may allow Duterte to stay in power
indefinitely.
