Philippine dictator’s son wins landslide presidential victory

MANILA: The son of late Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos cemented a landslide presidential election victory on Tuesday, after Filipinos bet a familiar but tainted dynasty could ease rampant poverty -- while dismissing warnings the clan’s return would deepen corruption and weaken democracy.

With an initial count almost complete, Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Junior had secured over 56 percent of the vote and more than double the tally of his nearest rival, liberal Leni Robredo.

His now unassailable lead of 16 million-plus votes spells another astonishing reversal in the fortunes of the Marcos family, who have gone from the presidential palace to pariahs and back again in the space of a few decades.

The Marcos victory is a hammer blow to millions of Filipinos who hoped to reverse course after six bloody years of increasingly authoritarian rule by outgoing President Rodrigo Duterte. Far from repudiating Duterte’s excesses, Filipino voters elected his daughter Sara as vice president by a landslide in a parallel vote.

In 1986, Marcos senior and kleptocratic first lady Imelda Marcos were chased into exile by the "People Power" revolution. Marcos junior steadfastly refused to denounce his family’s brutal and corrupt excesses in a campaign marked by a relentless online whitewashing of history.

With memories of the regime fading with time and muddied by countless misleading Facebook posts, Filipino voters turned to Marcos to rekindle past glories that were mostly imagined. "He will lift our country from the poverty we’re experiencing now," said supporter and retired police officer Anthony Sola, who described himself as elated.

The 50-year-old dismissed allegations that the Marcoses stole as much as $10 billion during their last period in power: "I don’t believe they stole money, because if they did, they should have been imprisoned already."

Some 43 percent of Filipinos consider themselves poor, and 39 percent more feel they are on the borderline, according to a March poll by the Social Weather Survey. Delivering a late-night address from his campaign headquarters in Manila on Monday, a tired but beaming Marcos thanked volunteers for months of "sacrifices and work". But he stopped short of claiming victory, warning that "the count is not yet done". A fully certified tally is not expected before May 28.