The Philippine presidential and vice presidential election of 2016 is the next presidential election in the Philippines, scheduled on Monday, May 9, 2016. Incumbent President Benigno Aquino III is barred from seeking re-election, pursuant to the 1987 Philippine Constitution. Therefore, this election will determine the 16th President of the Philippines. The position of president and vice president are elected separately, and the winning candidates may come from different political parties.
This will be the 16th presidential election in the Philippines since 1935, and the sixth sextennial presidential election since 1986. This will be a part of the 2016 general election where elections to the Senate, House of Representatives and local government above the barangay level, including the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao shall be held.
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[hide]Electoral system[edit]
The election is held every six years after 1992, on the second Monday of May. The incumbent president is term limited. The incumbent vice president may run for two consecutive terms. As Joseph Estrada, who was elected in 1998, was able to run in 2010, it is undetermined if the term limit is for life, or is only limited to the incumbent.
The plurality voting system is used to determine the winner: the candidate with the highest number of votes, whether or not one has a majority, wins the presidency. The vice presidential election is a separate election, is held on the same rules, and voters may split their ticket. Both winners serve for six years beginning June 30. 2016 and ends six years later.
The candidates are determined via political conventions of the different political parties. As most political parties in the Philippines are not based on ideology but as a relationship between patrons and clients, and interactions between political dynasties, a person who was not nominated in this way may either run as an independent, get drafted by another party, or form one's own party. Candidates register at the Commission on Elections. which also regulates and holds the election. The commission then weeds out the so-called "nuisance candidates," or those who have no capability of running a nationwide campaign. This limits the candidates to a small number. Campaigning runs for three months, beginning on early February, and ends at the eve of the election, with a break for Maundy Thursday and Good Friday.
Counting of votes is initially held at voting precincts, then are tabulated to the towns and cities, then to the provinces, and finally to Congress, which canvasses the votes. Election protests are handled by the Supreme Court, when it sits as thePresidential Electoral Tribunal.
Background[edit]
Senator Benigno Aquino III, who ran on an anti-corruption platform, defeatedJoseph Estrada, deposed president who was convicted of massive corruption in 2009, of the Pwersa ng Masang Pilipino (PMP) and several others in the presidential election. Meanwhile, Estrada's running mate, Makati Mayor Jejomar Binay of the Partido Demokratiko Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayan (PDP-Laban), defeated Aquino's running mate, Senator Mar Roxas of the Liberal Party and several others, in the vice presidential election.[1] Roxas eventually sued Binay of electoral fraud in the Presidential Electoral Tribunal, citing that some of his votes were recorded asnull votes.[2]
Both Binay and Roxas were subsequently appointed by Aquino to his cabinet, with Binay heading the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council,[3] and Roxas first being given the Transportation and Communications portfolio, then finally named as Secretary of the Interior and Local Government, after the ban of appointing losing candidates expired a year after Aquino took office on June 30, 2010.[4] As of 2014, the tribunal had still not yet acted upon the preliminary motions of both parties and on Binay's counter-protest; the suit is expected to be never resolved by the time President Aquino's term expires.[5]
For the midterm 2013 Senate election, Aquino and Roxas formed the Team PNoycoalition;[6] Estrada's PMP and Binay's PDP-Laban forged an electoral alliance, theUnited Nationalist Alliance (UNA).[7] Team PNoy won nine Senate seats against UNA's three.[8] Movie and Television Review and Classification Board chairmanGrace Poe, who was a daughter of 2004 presidential candidate Fernando Poe, Jr., and was from Team PNoy, appeared as an independent on the ballot, but was personally supported by the elder Poe's best friend Estrada, emerged as the surprise topnotcher,[9] catapulting her into the presidential candidates discussion.[10]
In March 2014, PDP-Laban withdrew from UNA, a week after Binay resigned as party chairman, due "to differences with its leaders". Party president Aquilino Pimentel III had a public quarrel with Binay over Juan Miguel Zubiri's inclusion in UNA's 2013 senatorial slate, whom Pimentel had accused of cheating in the 2007 Senate election.[11]
Several other stalwarts of UNA, such as senators Juan Ponce Enrile and Jinggoy Estrada, who had manifested his intention to run as Binay's running mate, and others such as Senator Bong Revilla of Lakas-CMD, who is planning to run for president, are currently detained due to their involvement in the pork barrel scam.[12][13] No personalities linked with the Liberal Party but were also involved in the scam were investigated upon; these actions by the government, which it says is part of its anti-corruption drive, has been cited by UNA as "political persecution".[14]
On July 2014, Renato Bondal, a defeated mayoral candidate in the 2013 Makati mayoral election, filed plunder cases against Makati mayor Jejomar Binay, Jr. and his father, the vice president, to the Ombudsman. By the next month, a subcommittee of the Blue Ribbon Committee composed solely of Pimentel, along with Nacionalista Party members Alan Peter Cayetano and Antonio Trillanes IV, began still ongoing Senate hearings against Binay on his alleged his corruption while serving as mayor of Makati, beginning with the alleged overpriced annex building of the Makati City Hall.[15] It was followed by hearings on alleged corruption on deals supplying Makati senior citizens with birthday cakes,[16] an agricultural estate in Rosario, Batangas that Binay allegedly owns,[17] the allegedly overpriced Makati Science High School,[18] and the relocation of Makati residents to Calauan, Laguna to a community without basic necessities.[19]
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Binay had consistently denied any wrongdoing,[20] and from owning the Rosario estate,[21] but had never appeared at the Senate.[22] UNA Secretary General JV Bautista branded the investigations as part of the "Operation Plan Stop Nognog", insinuating on Binay's dark skin, with Roxas, Cayetano and Trillanes allegedly behind it to prevent Binay from becoming president. He accused billionaire businessman Salvador Zamora as its financier.[23] In May 2015, the Court of Appeals ordered the 242 bank accounts belonging to Binay to be frozen for six months, when it granted the petition of the Anti-Money Laundering Council and of the Ombudsman. Binay's camp had alleged certain people from the Liberal Party to be behind the freeze order,[24] a charge President Aquino, in a Bombo Radyointerview, himself denied.[25]
By late May 2015, the subcommittee report recommending the filing of a plunder (corruption worth more than 50 million pesos) complaint against Binay was signed by all three subcommittee members and Grace Poe.[26] By early June, ten senators had already signed the subcommittee report, making it official and available to be debated upon in the Senate floor.[27] A month later, Binay sued Cayetano, Trillanes and several others for 200 million pesos in damages at the Makati Regional Trial Court for "well-organized and orchestrated effort" to damage his reputation and worsen his chances of becoming president.[28]
Meanwhile, Aquino held several meetings with Roxas, Poe and Francis Escudero on who should be the standard bearer of the Liberal Party. While none of them had announced their preferences at that time, Aquino is expected to announced his preferred candidate after his final State of the Nation Address late in July. Congressional heads Franklin Drilon and Feliciano Belmonte, Jr. denied that Liberal Party members had been dissatisfied with Aquino's indecision, saying that the party is still united.[29]
On early July, Binay launched his party, the United Nationalist Alliance.[30] Later that month, Aquino did endorse Roxas for president, which the latter accepted.[31] In August, Rodrigo Duterte, the Davao City mayor who had been a subject of a strong online following urging him to run, announced his intention to retire from politics after his mayoral term ends in 2016.[32] Poe announced her intention to seek the presidency by mid-September,[33] followed by Escudero's announcing that he'll be her running mate a day later.[34] Several days later, Cayetano announced his vice presidential candidacy, preferring to be Duterte's running mate.
On October 3. Trillanes formally announced his vice presidential campaign as an independent, supporting Poe's presidential campaign.[35] Days later, Leni Robredo, the representative from Camarines Sur and widow of former Secretary of the Interior and Local Government Jesse Robredo who died in a plane crash on 2012, accepted the offer of the Liberal Party to be Roxas' running mate.[36] Also on that day, Senator Bongbong Marcos announced his candidacy as vice president.[37] A week later, after being nominated by UNA, Senator Gregorio Honasan announced that he would be Binay's running mate.[38] A day later, on the launch of her new book, Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago announced her presidential candidacy;[39] a couple of days later, she announced that Marcos would be her running mate.[40]
At the final day of the filing of candidacies, Duterte did not show up; instead, the PDP-Laban nominated Martin Diño, chairman of the Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption.[41] At the end of the day, more than a hundred people registered as presidential candidates, after a 5-day long filing period. These include current OFW Family Club representative Roy Señeres running under the Partido ng Manggagawa at Magsasaka, and former representative Iloilo Augusto Syjuco, who is running as in independent. For the vice presidency, nineteen people manifested their intention to run, including former assemblyman from Ifugao Zosimo Jesus Paredes II, who is running under the Partido Bansang Maharlika.
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