Polls

Photo Credit : Zhara Mae Coronado

This is the penultimate day of declaring who the Filipinos will choose to lead this seemingly God-forsaken country. By the end of the day, there will be, more or less, a new set of leaders to guide the Philippines in the next 6 years. At exactly 5pm, voting precincts closed (some precincts were reported to be extended for an hour to make up for machine glitches early in the morning) and election receipts were already being counted to match the number of voters. All of the people in our household were glued to the telly. By sleeping time, our city mayor, Rodrigo Duterte, was leading the race at more than 12million votes with the opponent far behind with 5million less votes. At 75% of the total clustered precincts already counted by 12mn, it was clear that the foul-mouthed Mayor of Davao City has indeed already won. One presidential candidate has already conceded.

I am happy and teary-eyed at the thought that the majority of the Philippines has trusted the future of the country to my beloved Mayor. The weeks leading to this election had been hard for most of the Davaoenos. It hurts to see your close friends (sometimes baselessly) mock your Mayor. The Mayor whom you knew have done so much good in your city. Several times I find myself hating the people who urged him to run for the highest position in the country. My reason, i didnt want to share him with the rest of the Philippines.

Maybe by the time i wake up tomorrow morning, he (Duterte) would have had a considerable lead or maybe declared the winner. But one thing is for sure, there is no way the 5million vote lead could be overtaken by the other candidates. Unless of course the "magic" of Philippine politics will be "deployed".