Rodrigo takes big lead

Anti-establishment firebrand Rodrigo Duterte was yesterday heading for a huge win in the Philippine presidential elections, according to a poll monitor, after an incendiary campaign dominated by his profanity-laced threats to kill criminals.

Duterte, the longtime mayor of the southern city of Davao, has hypnotised millions with his vows of brutal-but-quick solutions to the nation's twin plagues of crime and poverty, which many believe have worsened despite strong economic growth in recent years.

Duterte had 38.72 percent of the vote, with 75 percent of the total counted, according to the PPCRV, a Catholic Church-run poll monitor accredited by the government to tally the ballots.

That put him 5.3 million votes, or about 16 percentage points, ahead of his nearest rival, administration candidate Mar Roxas.

"He's almost a sure winner now," prominent political analyst Ramon Casiple told AFP. Before the results came out, Duterte was already speaking like a winner as he called for rivalries to be put aside following one of the nation's most bitter and divisive campaigns in the Philippines' history.

Polling officers print documents from a vote counting machine after polls closed in the presidential election in Manila, Philippines yesterday. Photo: AFP

"I want to reach out my hand and let us begin the healing now," Duterte told reporters in Davao, the nation's third-biggest city, which he has ruled for most of the past two decades.

However, he said he would not proclaim himself the victor until it was official. "I am not there until I am there, and that is the when last vote is counted and you are declared a winner. At this time it would be presumptuous of me," he said.

Roxas had 22.39 percent of the vote, while Senator Grace Poe trailed closely in third, according to the PPCRV.

In the Philippines, a winner is decided simply by whomever gets the most votes.

Twenty-one-year-old resident Fife Vanice Dayola, who was born with bone disalignment, casts her vote with the assistance of her mother, Rowena Dayola, in the election at a polling station in Davao. Photo: AFP

Duterte, a pugnacious 71-year-old, surged from outsider to the top of surveys with cuss-filled vows to kill tens of thousands of criminals, threats to establish one-man rule if lawmakers disobeyed him and promises to embrace communist rebels.

He also boasted repeatedly about his Viagra-fuelled affairs, while promising voters his mistresses would not cost a lot because he kept them in cheap boarding houses and took them to short-stay hotels for sex.

A volunteer election worker takes a rest amongst posters and sample ballots in a slum community in Manila. Photo: AFP