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Bangkok: Thirty years after a popular uprising forced the Marcos family from the Philippines, the son of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos has cried foul after falling short of pulling off a return to Malacanang Palace.
Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos jnr claimed election irregularities after the latest counting for Monday's vice-presidential election showed him 230,000 votes behind social activist Leni Robredo, the widow of a former interior minister who ran on a ruling Liberal party ticket.
His campaign office asked election officials to stop the count, citing "an alarming and suspicious trend", but elections commission chairman Andres Bautista said "these accusations are not true … we are committed to being impartial, to be neutral".
Senator Marcos, 58, appealed to his supporters, who have been calling through social media for protest rallies, to remain calm as the count continued.
In a separate vote, on Monday Filipinos elected maverick anti-establishment provincial mayor Rodrigo Duterte president in a landslide victory that has rattled powerful dynastic families who have ruled the Philippines for decades.
Mr Duterte has vowed to rule the island nation of 100 million with an iron fist, wiping out criminals and ending corruption.
Senator Marcos attracted almost 14 million votes in a campaign for the vice-presidency that like Mr Duterte pushed for a return to an authoritarian era in the country where crime and violence are rampant.
He benefited from an ill-informed view of the Marcos dictatorship among young voters and disenchantment with the current political elite, analysts say.
Senator Marcos will be well placed to run for president in six years' time.
Under the country's constitution presidents can only serve one term.
Senator Marcos' 84-year-old mother Imelda – famous for her lavish lifestyle and the 3000 shoes she left behind in Malacanang Palace in 1986 – was re-elected for a third time to congress and her sister Imee, 60, was elected governor of the family stronghold of Illocos Norte.
For two decades Ferdinand Marcos brutally ruled the Philippines, looting billions of dollars from public coffers and according to Amnesty International imprisoning 70,000 people, torturing 34,000 and killing 3240.
A government agency called the Presidential Commission on Good Governance has been working for years to trace looted wealth estimated at up to $US10 billion ($13.6 billion).
As of December it had recovered US$3.6 billion, some of it from accounts in Switzerland.
The agency is working to recover more than 200 of Marcos' paintings, including works by Michelangelo, Monet, Rembrandt, Picasso and Van Gogh. The collection is valued between $US150 million and $US300 million.
Senator Marcos – one of the dictator's four children - has never apologised for the abuses of his father.
Among his strongest critics is out-going president Benigno Aquino whose father was assassinated as he returned from exile under the Marcos regime.
"The blood relatives of the dictator could have said, 'My father was wrong, give us a chance to correct this'," Mr Aquino said in February, on the 30th anniversary of the 1986 uprising.
"If he can't see what his family did wrong, how will we know it won't happen again?"
