MANILA: Millions of Filipinos headed to the polls today in a mid-term election widely seen as a referendum on the explosive feud between President Ferdinand Marcos and impeached vice-president Sara Duterte.
Polls across the archipelago nation opened at 7am in a race that will decide more than 18,000 posts, from seats in the house of representatives to hotly contested municipal offices.
It is the senate race, however, that carries potentially major implications for 2028s presidential election.
The 12 senators chosen today will form half the jury in a Duterte impeachment trial tentatively set for July that could see her permanently barred from public office.
Dutertes long-simmering feud with former ally Marcos exploded in February when she was impeached by the house for alleged high crimes including corruption and an assassination plot against the president.
Barely a month later, her father, former president Rodrigo Duterte, was arrested and flown to the International Criminal Court (ICC) the same day to face a charge of crimes against humanity over his deadly anti-drugs campaign.
Sara Duterte will need nine votes in the 24-seat senate to preserve any hope of a future presidential run.
Heading into today, seven of the candidates polling in the top 12 were endorsed by Marcos while four were aligned with his vice-president.
Two, including the presidents independent-minded sister Imee Marcos, were adopted as honorary members of the Duterte familys PDP-Laban party on Saturday.
The move to add Marcos and television personality Camille Villar to the partys slate was intended to add more allies to protect the vice-president against impeachment, according to the resolution.
At her final rally in Manila on Thursday, Duterte invoked the spectre of massive electoral fraud and once again referred to her fathers transfer to the ICC as a kidnapping.
Despite his detention at The Hague, the elder Duterte remains on the ballot in his familys southern stronghold of Davao city, where he is seeking to retake his former job as mayor.
At least one local poll is predicting he will win comfortably.
A day before the election, at least two people were killed in a clash between supporters of rival political camps in southern Mindanao islands autonomous Muslim region, the Philippine army reported today.
An official who answered the phone at the Basilan province disaster office in the Bangsamoro autonomous region put the death toll at four.
The Philippines has a history of violent elections especially in the restive south, where armed clashes between groups of political rivals are common.
National police have been on alert for more than a week, and around 163,000 officers have been deployed to secure polling stations, escort election officials and guard checkpoints.
Thousands more personnel from the military, fire departments and other agencies have been mobilised to keep the peace in a country where battles over hotly contested provincial posts are known to erupt in violence.
A city council hopeful, a polling officer and a village chief are among the at least 16 people police say have been killed in attacks in the run-up to todays election.
On Saturday, a candidate for municipal councillor was one of two men in an armed group killed in a shootout with police and the military.
Further north, a group of men were arrested the same day at the Cebu airport while transporting 441 million pesos in cash, a crime under election rules aimed at preventing the exchange of bribes for votes.
A special early voting window this year allowed the elderly and people with disabilities to begin casting votes at 5am.