Asia-Pacific

Vote death toll mounts in Philippines

(Agencies)
Updated: 2007-05-15 11:32

MANILA - The death toll from election-related violence in the Philippines has risen to 126, police said Tuesday, as vote workers tallied ballots from the country's mid-term polls.

A policeman guards ballot boxes in the northern Philippine province of Abra. The death toll from election-related violence in the Philippines has risen to 126, police said Tuesday, as vote workers tallied ballots from the country's mid-term polls. [AFP]

Two teachers were killed early Tuesday when five unidentified men burned down their school in the town of Taysan south of Manila, which was a polling place for Monday's elections, said Chief Superintendent Nicasio Radovan.

The man set fire to a ballot box, but the flames quickly spread, engulfing the school and killing the teachers, who were working as vote counters.

Television reports also said a policeman guarding ballot boxes in northern Ilocos Norte province was shot dead late Monday, after polls had closed.

Elsewhere, a town councillor running for re-election in the southern town of Maitum was shot dead in front of his house ahead of election day, police said.

The Philippine national police said 126 people had been killed and 148 others wounded in violence leading up to and during Monday's polls, which saw millions vote for congressmen, half the Senate and some 17,000 local posts.

An exit poll conducted in Manila by leading broadcaster ABS-CBN hinted that the opposition could win nine of the 12 Senate seats up for grabs, but cautioned that the count did not indicate national trends.

The focus of the election has been the race for the 12 Senate seats, where President Gloria Arroyo's Team Unity (TU) had faced off against the Genuine Opposition (GO) slate.

The election commission has said it could have results in 10 days, but vote counting in the Philippines, where tallying is still done manually, have previously been long, drawn-out affairs, leaving the process open to cheating.

Commission officials put turnout among the 45 million registered voters at 70 to 80 percent.