Fearless forecast: 10 May 2010 News headline

Fearless forecast: International
news headline on May 10, 2010

MANILA – In their first ever automated elections on Monday, voters in the Philippines have chosen as President the son of a widowed former president whose martyred senator-husband was assassinated during the remaining years of an ousted dictator in the 1980s.

Ironically, on the same day that the son and namesake of the late former Sen. Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Sr. got elected for a fixed six-year term as the new President, the son and namesake of the late dictator Pres. Ferdinand Marcos was also elected to the Philippine Senate.

More than 40 percent of Filipino voters elected neophyte Sen. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino Jr., son of the late former Pres. Corazon “Cory” Aquino, to succeed the country’s second female president, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who herself has made an unprecedented run for a congressional seat in the 250-member House of Representatives in the hope of becoming the nation’s first female Speaker in the Lower House of Congress.

Almost the same percentage of Filipinos also elected last-term Rep. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. as one of the 12 newly elected or reelected senators to fill up the vacant half of the 24-member Senate and serve the next six years until their term in the Upper House expires in 2016.

As early as the time he filed his candidacy in November 2009, Marcos Jr. already announced his intention to tread in his father’s footsteps in the 2016 presidential elections, possibly pitting him against the grandsons and namesakes of deceased former presidents Sergio Osmeña and Manuel Roxas.

Manuel “Mar” Roxas III, outgoing senator and Aquino Jr.’s running mate, was also elected Monday to a full six-year term as Vice President.

Outgoing Pres. Macapagal-Arroyo, newly elected to her first three-year term as congressional representative of her home district, is the daughter of Marcos Sr.’s predecessor, the late former Pres. Diosdado Macapagal.