Duterte heads for landslide

Front-running presidential candidate Mayor Rodrigo Duterte smiles during a news conference shortly after voting in a polling precinct at Daniel R. Aguinaldo National High School, Matina district, his hometown in Davao city, southern Philippines Monday, May 9, 2016. Duterte was the last to vote among five presidential hopefuls. (AP Photo/Bullit Marquez)

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.

As of 9:36 p.m., Duterte, the  standard-bearer of PDP-Laban (Partido Demokratiko Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayan) had received 11,593,428 votes, nearly twice the votes of the runner-up, Sen. Grace Poe, who had 6,576,600 votes.

His votes so far were from the Luzon provinces of Abra, La Union, Pampanga, Quezon and Laguna, and Cebu, Leyte, Biliran and Bohol in the Visayas.

As expected, Duterte was dominating the election in Mindanao, including his bailiwick Davao del Norte and Davao del Sur, Agusan del Norte, Surigao del Sur, the Lanao provinces, Maguindanao, Sarangani, South Cotabato and Sulu.

As of 8:30 p.m., administration candidate  Roxas was in third place with 6,177,430 votes.

Vice President Jejomar Binay, who had been banking on a come-from-behind victory, had received 3,755,745 votes, roughly just a third of Duterte’s votes.

Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago was in the fifth place, barely breaking through the million mark with 1,150,924 votes.

It was her third attempt to win the presidency.

The Inquirer’s partial and unofficial tally is based on data transmitted to the Commission on Elections’ transparency server at the Pope Pius XII Catholic Center in Manila.

The Inquirer is among a handful of news organizations given access to real-time results.

The figures accounted for  18,823,706 votes, or 33.77 percent of the total, covering 37,758 precincts.

In the vice presidential race, Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano, Duterte’s running mate, was a far third with 3,889525 votes, but overtaking independent candidate Sen. Francis “Chiz” Escudero, Poe’s running mate, who had 3,278,147 votes.

Senators Antonio Trillanes IV and Gregorio “Gringo” Honasan II, both bottom-dwellers in the polls, remained consistently in the last two spots: Trillanes had 552,266 votes, while Honasan had 481,102 votes.

PPCRV count

In the unofficial count of the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) as of 9:10 p.m., Duterte was pulling farther away from his rivals in the presidential race after 67 percent of clustered precincts had been counted.

Marcos had a narrow lead over Robredo in the race for the vice presidency.

In the race for Malacañang, Duterte had 11,436,893 votes, with nearly a 5-million-vote lead over Poe, who had with 6,491441. Roxas was third, with 6,407,237.

Binay was fourth with 3,872,413 votes, followed by Santiago with 1,174,924 and the late Roy Señeres with 16,344.

Marcos led the contest for the vice presidency with 10,535,821 votes, followed by Robredo with 9,627,377.

In third place was Cayetano with 4,015,573, and Escudero was fourth with 3,380,048.

Trillanes got 571,560 and  Honasan 498,375.