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Ferdinand Marcos Jr on cusp of winning landslide in Philippines elections | CNN

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Ferdinand Marcos Jr on cusp of winning landslide in Philippines elections | CNN



CNN
 — 

Ferdinand Marcos Jr, the son of the previous Philippine dictator, is on the cusp of successful the Philippine presidential election by a landslide, in keeping with preliminary and unofficial outcomes, taking the Marcos dynasty one step nearer to the Malacañang Palace, 36 years after the household fled a mass rebellion.

Marcos Jr has about 30 million votes in comparison with his closest rival, the outgoing Vice President Leni Robredo, who has about 14 million votes, in keeping with a partial and unofficial tally of the Fee on Elections (Comelec), reported by CNN affiliate CNN Philippines.

Official outcomes, nonetheless, might take weeks to be confirmed.

Often known as “Bongbong” within the Philippines, Marcos Jr’s rise is the end result of a decades-long try and rebrand the Marcos household’s identify and picture, most just lately by way of social media, analysts say.

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Marcos Jr is the son and namesake of former authoritarian chief Ferdinand Marcos Sr, whose 21-year rule was marked by human rights abuses and plunder of the state coffers.

The previous senator thanked his supporters for his or her perception in him in a speech late on Monday.

“Despite the fact that the counting is just not over but, I can’t wait to thank all of you… to those that helped, to those that joined our battle, to those that sacrificed,” he stated.

Throughout campaigning, Marcos Jr ran on a platform of “unity” and has promised extra jobs, decrease costs, and extra funding in agriculture and infrastructure. Political analysts say Marcos Jr appeals to Filipinos bored with the political bickering and guarantees of progress and financial reform from successive administrations that many really feel have failed to learn unusual individuals.

Opinion polls had him as main by greater than 30 proportion factors within the run as much as Monday’s vote.

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Marcos Jr’s operating mate for vice chairman is Sara Duterte Carpio, the daughter of populist outgoing chief Rodrigo Duterte. Lots of their supporters are voting to see a continuation of Duterte’s insurance policies, together with his controversial “warfare on medication.”

Partial and unofficial outcomes present Duterte Carpio can be main the race for the vice presidency. The vice chairman is elected individually from the president within the Philippines.

Robredo, who all through campaigning positioned herself as selling good governance, transparency and human rights, advised her supporters on Monday, “we’re not but accomplished, we’re simply beginning.”

“We began one thing that was by no means witnessed earlier than within the nation’s total historical past: a marketing campaign led by individuals,” she stated, in keeping with CNN Philippines.

Her grassroots marketing campaign was pushed by a military of citizen volunteers going home to deal with canvassing votes, and her rallies persistently drew a whole lot of hundreds of individuals.

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Vice President Leni Robredo speaks to the media after casting her vote at a school converted into a polling precinct on May 9, in Magarao, Camarines Sur province, Philippines.

Marcos Jr tied his marketing campaign to his father’s legacy, along with his slogan “rise once more” tapping into the nostalgia of some who noticed the interval beneath Marcos Sr as a golden period for the nation.

Supporters of the Marcos household say the interval was a time of progress and prosperity, characterised by the constructing of main infrastructure like hospitals, roads and bridges. Critics say that was an phantasm and people initiatives had been pushed by widespread corruption, international loans and ballooning debt.

Tens of hundreds of individuals had been imprisoned, tortured or killed through the martial regulation interval from 1972 to 1981, in keeping with human rights teams. The Philippines’ Presidential Fee on Good Governance (PCGG), tasked with recovering the household and their associates’ ill-gotten wealth, estimates about $10 billion was stolen from the Filipino individuals. Dozens of instances are nonetheless energetic.

The Marcos household has repeatedly denied abuses beneath martial regulation and utilizing state funds for his or her private use. Campaigners say the Marcoses had been by no means held totally accountable and victims of martial regulation are nonetheless combating for justice.

Marcos Jr was 29 when his household had been chased into exile in Hawaii following a Folks Energy revolution that toppled his father’s regime in 1986. Marcos Sr died in exile three years later, however his household returned in 1991 and have become rich, influential politicians, with successive members of the family representing their dynastic stronghold of Ilocos Norte.

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Journalist Maria Ressa, the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize winner and president and chief government of native media outlet Rappler, advised CNN a Marcos win reveals “not simply Filipinos however the world, the affect of disinformation on a democracy.”

“He’ll decide the way forward for this nation however concurrently its previous.”

Marcos Jr appears set to exchange President Duterte, identified internationally for cracking down on civil society and the media and a bloody warfare on medication that in keeping with police has claimed the lives of greater than 6,000 individuals. Regardless of his file on human rights and the Covid-19 pandemic, which made the nation’s starvation disaster worse, Duterte stays massively widespread domestically.

The election additionally has ramifications past the nation’s borders. With China and the US more and more treating the Indo-Pacific as a staging floor for his or her world showdown, the Philippines will probably come beneath rising financial and geopolitical stress, significantly as its territorial claims within the South China Sea overlap with these of Beijing.

Analysts say there is a chance for a reset of the Philippines’ relationships with each main powers – and the end result of the vote might shift the steadiness of energy in Asia.

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Live news: Trump gives US ambassador to Israel post to ex-governor Mike Huckabee

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Live news: Trump gives US ambassador to Israel post to ex-governor Mike Huckabee

Events to look out for on Tuesday include speeches from the Federal Reserve governor, Home Depot earnings and Spotify results:

Fedspeak: Less than a week on from the central bank’s second rate cut of the year, Federal Reserve governor Chris Waller will deliver the keynote at the Clearing House Annual Conference in New York. Separately, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond president Tom Barkin is scheduled to speak at a summit in Baltimore. At Carnegie Mellon University, Philadelphia Fed president Patrick Harker will deliver a lecture on “Fintech, AI & the Changing Financial Landscape”.

Home Depot: Investors will be eager to find out whether the Federal Reserve’s back-to-back rate cuts, which will have an effect on mortgage rates, have made a difference to consumer appetite for home improvement projects. Home Depot, which last quarter cut its sales outlook on weakened consumer spending, is projected to report a 4.3 per cent increase in third-quarter revenues, to $39.3bn.

Other earnings: Tyson Foods will announce fourth-quarter earnings before the opening bell. Flutter and Spotify will post quarterly results after market close.

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Trump transition tracker: Trump nominates Mike Huckabee to be Israeli ambassador

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Trump transition tracker: Trump nominates Mike Huckabee to be Israeli ambassador

President-elect Donald Trump’s newly picked “border czar” Tom Homan addressed his forthcoming deportation plan and state leaders who have objected to sweeping immigration policies.

During an appearance on Fox News on Monday, Homan issued a warning to so-called “sanctuary” states and cities to “get the hell out of the way” of the Trump administration’s mass deportation plans.

File – In this Dec. 5, 2017 file photo, then Acting Director for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Thomas Homan at a news conference in Washington.

“I saw today numerous governors from sanctuary states saying they’re going to step in the way. They better get the hell out of the way. Either you help us or get the hell out of the way, because ICE is going to do their job,” he warned, referring to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, where he formerly served as director.

“I’ll double the workforce in that sanctuary city. We’re going to do our job despite the politics. We’re doing it. So get used to it, because we’re coming,” Homan said.

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When asked if he plans to deport American citizens, Homan said, “President Trump has made it clear we will prioritize public safety threats and national security threats first, and that’s how the focus would be.”

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Germany’s Olaf Scholz defies odds as party swings behind re-election bid

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Germany’s Olaf Scholz defies odds as party swings behind re-election bid

Olaf Scholz has just pulled the plug on his coalition and lost his parliamentary majority, with polls suggesting his party will be defeated in Germany’s upcoming snap election. Yet he still looks likely to be crowned as his party’s candidate for chancellor.

The government crisis that culminated last week with Scholz calling time on the three-party alliance plunged Germany into a new phase of turbulence. But Social Democrat leaders have rallied round him, steadying his status in a party that long nurtured doubts about their chancellor.

Some Social Democrats would still prefer to see him replaced on the ballot by Boris Pistorius, the popular defence minister. But they are the minority. Most expect an SPD congress to be held in the coming weeks to anoint Scholz as the party’s Kanzlerkandidat — regardless of his approval ratings.

The support for Scholz was on full display at an emotional meeting of the SPD parliamentary group last week when he was given a standing ovation by MPs.

Jens Spahn, an MP for the opposition Christian Democrats (CDU) and a former health minister, described the scene as “surreal”.

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“Here is Olaf Scholz, a failed chancellor, his coalition has just broken down, he’s sacked his finance minister and his SPD thinks it’s a cause for celebration?” Spahn told the Financial Times.

The incredulity in opposition ranks increased after a television interview with Scholz on Sunday evening in which he refused to admit mistakes and, in the view of some commentators, came across as cold and unsympathetic.

Some have openly questioned why the party still backs Scholz. TV presenter Micky Beisenherz compared him to Bruce Willis in the film The Sixth Sense. He “goes to work every day even though he’s long dead,” he wrote on X. “He just doesn’t know it yet.”

Just months ago, Scholz’s position was precarious. Some in the SPD blamed him for the party’s slump in support, with polls putting it at between 14 and 16 per cent over the past year, way behind the CDU on 30 to 32 per cent.

Many Social Democrats wonder whether they would be better off fielding defence minister Boris Pistorius © Bernd von Jutrczenka/dpa

But Scholz’s standing among some of his party colleagues has paradoxically improved since the government’s collapse. They have hailed him as a hero who finally lanced the boil, ending a dysfunctional government riven by ideological conflict.

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For them, the sacking of finance minister Christian Lindner, leader of the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP), was the inevitable climax of months of provocation.

“There is relief that we will no longer be subjected to endless humiliation by Lindner and the FDP,” said one SPD MP.

Scholz said he fired Lindner because he refused to suspend the “debt brake” — Germany’s constitutional cap on new borrowing — to allow for more funding for Ukraine. The issue has taken on greater urgency since US voters re-elected Donald Trump, who has questioned western aid to Kyiv.

The dismissal played well in the SPD’s grassroots. “It was a kind of liberation — long overdue,” said Dirk Smaczny, head of the party’s local branch in Rheinhausen-Mitte, near the Ruhr industrial city of Duisburg. “We’ve been waiting a long time for Scholz to show strong leadership, and he finally delivered it.”

“He could have said ‘let’s just muddle through another year’,” said Johannes Fechner, a senior SPD MP. “The fact he accepted that the country needed a new government, even though it might mean he’ll lose his job — the SPD rank-and-file really respect him for that.”

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Yet Scholz remains controversial in the party. Closely associated with the labour market reforms of chancellor Gerhard Schröder in the early 2000s that alienated working-class voters, he lost his bid for the party leadership in 2019 in a humiliating defeat.

He staged a remarkable comeback two years later, running for chancellor in 2021 and winning the election. He then brought together the SPD, FDP and Greens in a coalition that was unique in Germany’s history.

But his record has been clouded by countless internal rows over economic policy that he tried — and ultimately failed — to mediate. Scholz has seen the worst approval ratings of any postwar chancellor.

On Monday two SPD politicians from the chancellor’s home town of Hamburg, Markus Schreiber and Tim Stoberock, said he should make way for the defence minister.

“Our chances of winning the election or at least performing a lot better are much greater with [Pistorius], who has long been Germany’s most popular politician,” they wrote on Instagram.

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Scholz spent too much time cobbling together compromises “in technocratic language” which were then rejected by his coalition partners. “We believe the negative image the people in this country have of him can no longer be repaired,” they wrote.

Privately, some SPD lawmakers agreed that Pistorius might be a better bet. “But politics doesn’t work like that,” said one. “Scholz’s huge strategic advantage is that he holds the reins of power. He’s the one who took this step. He’s the one who announced early elections. That gives him a certain strength.”

Scholz has shown no inclination to stand aside — nor does he intend to put his candidacy to a party vote.

His spokesperson Steffen Hebestreit on Monday defended the absence of a formal selection process, saying there was no need — and also no time.

“First of all, he’s the natural candidate because he’s chancellor,” he told reporters. “Secondly, look at the clock . . . We’re going to have snap elections quite soon, if he loses the confidence vote. We all need to focus on that right now, and you can understand why.”

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Observers said that approach made sense, especially in light of what just happened in the US.

Wolfgang Schroeder, a political scientist at Kassel University, noted that the Democrats had hoped to improve their fortunes by substituting Joe Biden for Kamala Harris just months before the election.

“It injected some momentum, but it didn’t turn out to be long-lasting or effective,” he said. “For that reason I would advise the SPD against carrying out any grand experiments right now.”

MPs from the opposition CDU say that suits them, predicting that Scholz will be soundly beaten by their leader Friedrich Merz. “Olaf Scholz is the face of failure,” said CDU’s Spahn. “As such, we couldn’t wish for a better opponent.”

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