Phones prohibited in polling precincts to avert vote-buying

The Commission on Elections on Sunday said they've been receiving reports of political operators buying votes in cash and in kind in many areas nationwide.

"Vote-buying is everywhere," Comelec Commissioner Luie Guia told reporters.

"We are receiving reports that everything is being used to buy votes, not only money. It could be (plastic) basins, groceries."

Such small gifts are an effective, if illegal, way for politicians to win support in a nation where roughly one quarter of its 100 million people live below the poverty line.

In a town in Panglao island in Bohol, people identified with some candidates for municipal councilor reportedly went from one house to another distributing cash as low as 20 pesos per registered voter.

To try to check vote buying, the Comelec has banned mobile phones in polling places. This is so people cannot photograph their ballots to prove to vote-buyers that they cast their ballots for the right candidates.

At the national level, presidential and vice presidential rivals are also accusing each other of trying to rig the elections. 

President Benigno Aquino III, who is limited by the Constitution to a single term of six years, has warned the favorite to succeed him, Rodrigo Duterte, is a dictator in the making and will bring terror to the nation.

Duterte has in turn accused Aquino's administration of planning "massive cheating" to ensure that his preferred successor, former interior secretary Mar Roxas, wins.

Followers of Duterte, who has admitted links to vigilante death squads in Davao that rights groups say have killed more than 1,000 people, have warned of a "revolution" if he loses. 

Tens of thousands of security forces fanned out across the Philippines Sunday on the eve of national polls.

Elections are a traditionally volatile time in a nation infamous for lax gun laws and a violent political culture, and they have been inflamed again this year by allegations of massive corruption from the local village to presidential level.

At least 15 people have died in election-related violence, according to national police statistics.

In the latest suspected case, a grenade blast killed a nine-year-old girl behind the house of a powerful political warlord in the strife-torn province of Maguindanao late on Saturday, said Chief Inspector Jonathan del Rosario.

The girl's death has not yet been included in the tally, although it likely will be, according to del Rosario, spokesman for a police election-monitoring taskforce in Manila.

"This looks like it is election-related but we have a process we have to follow," he told Agence France-Presse.

Del Rosario said 90 percent of the nation's police force, or about 135,000 officers, were already on election-related duty and had been authorised to carry their assault rifles. He said they were guarding polling and canvassing places and manning road checkpoints. — Agence France-Presse with APG, GMA News