Four months of electoral campaigning in the Philippines has taken a grim toll: more than 100 dead and almost 300 wounded. The country is gearing up for a vote on May 14 that will renew the House of Representatives, half of the seats in the Senate, and more than 17,000 administrative posts at the national and local levels. According to figures released by the police, since the start of the year 52 political candidates have been killed along with 36 of their supporters, and eleven civilians, who found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. Bloodshed at election time is certainly nothing new to the Philippines: 189 people died in the wave of violence and political murders that led up to the 2004 presidential elections. Candidates hire private militias for protection and to intimidate their opponents, while trading accusations of fraud as tensions reach the boiling point. Widespread availability of firearms—mostly purchased on the black market and so completely unregulated—only adds to the violence.

Opponents have already begun to accuse President Arroyo’s government of attempting to manipulate the vote. But accusations of that sort have also been coming in from groups normally supportive of the government: a group of retired army generals calling themselves Bantay Boto (literally, “the guardians of the vote”) has accused some military officers of working behind the scenes with electoral officials in order to affect the outcome of the vote. These are the officers put in charge by Gloria Arroyo to guarantee the security and transparency of the elections. According to Bantay Boto, as many as sixteen provinces' authorities may be guilty of gerrymandering that would result in fourteen million votes being redirected to support candidates allied with President Arroyo.

All the while, violent clashes continue along three domestic fronts where the Manila government has been fighting rebels for decades with little or no results. Last Tuesday in Mindanao in the Muslim south, an explosion at a market killed eight civilians—the government was quick to blame Islamic fundamentalists. In Jolo, Muslim groups are celebrating the recent decision by a Manila tribunal that will allow Nur Misuari, leader of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), to run for governor despite the fact that he has been under house arrest for years. Since 1971, the struggle for an independent Islamic state in the south has killed more than 150,000. Last Tuesday on the island of Mindoro, Communist fighters in the New People’s Army (NPA) detonated a roadside bomb as a Philippine police convoy passed, killing five. The NPA has been active in the Philippines for 38 years, and President Arroyo and her army have been fierce in their attempts to defeat it: bombing raids, firing on civilians, sieges to flush them out their hiding places that recall medieval warfare. Human rights organizations have criticized some of these tactics.

The most recent episode involving civilians took the life of a nine-year-old girl, Grecil Buya, who was killed on 31 March by the Philippine army during a gun battle with NPA militias. Popular anger erupted when army commanders in Manila tried to explain away Grecil’s death by claiming she was a child soldier—so it was OK to shoot. They changed their version of facts at the end of April, admitting she was just a child and calling the incident “tragic”. As one Philippine journalist commented, she couldn’t possibly have been a combatant—she was barely as tall as the rifle.