Philippine presidential election campaign kicks off
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Manila - Campaigning for the Philippine presidential elections kicked off Tuesday, with outgoing President Benigno Aquino urging voters to support his party's candidates.
Aquino, whose six-year term ends on June 30, said the May 9 vote would be a referendum on his administration's programme to promote the "straight path" in government.
"You will decide if the changes that we are experiencing will be permanent or they are merely a respite from our long history of corruption and poverty," he told supporters at a rally.
Aquino said his party's presidential candidate, former interior secretary Mar Roxas, was the best choice to succeed him.
"There is no one else but Mar Roxas and Leni Robredo," who is running for vice president, he said.
Roxas is tied in recent opinion polls for third place with Rodrigo Duterte, the tough-talking mayor of the southern city of Davao.
First-term Senator Grace Poe led the survey, with 30-per-cent support, according to Pulse Asia Research Inc.
Current Vice President Jejomar Binay was in second place in the poll.
Poe regained the lead after being suspended in December when the Commission on Elections disqualified her over questions surrounding her nationality.
She has filed an appeal with the Supreme Court, which suspended her disqualification by the commission, allowing her to keep campaigning, but has yet to make a final ruling.
Poe was abandoned as a baby on the steps of a church in the central city of Iloilo, and was adopted by a late Filipino action movie star.
The identities of her biological parents are not known.
She renounced her citizenship in 2001 to reside in the United States with her husband, but later returned and regained her Philippine citizenship.
More than 18,000 positions are up for grabs in the May 9 general elections, including national, regional and local posts.
- DPA
