Philippine opposition dominates senate winners list

MANILA, June 6 (Reuters) The Philippines announced 10 winners of elections to the Senate today with only two of them allied to President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

Two more winners will be declared after charges of cheating are dealt with, hundreds of thousands of missing ballots located and all the votes from the May 14 congressional elections tallied.

But these winners are also likely to be either independents or from the opposition and the 24-member upper house will be dominated by politicians inimical to Arroyo. Only half the house is chosen at each election.

The government, however, swept polls to the House of Representatives and clinched about 200 seats in the 275-member legislature, according to results announced earlier.

Analysts said the election results would not crimp foreign investment but could impede government efforts to ramp up growth.

''The current existing business environment, it works, it's there,'' said Peter Wallace, a consultant who heads the Wallace Business Forum.

''For business generally, we can more or less continue outside of the political spectrum. So what happens here is not of great relevance.'' But he added: ''She (Arroyo) will need to be putting through a number of economic reforms to maintain the momentum from the spurt of growth we saw in the first quarter. That will need the cooperation of the senate.'' The economy grew almost seven per cent in the first quarter of the year - the highest for any quarter in the past 17 years.

Other analysts said despite the poll reverses for the administration, the business community would draw comfort from the fact that incidents of cheating were not high enough to provoke public unrest.

''There was some cheating in the elections, but efforts to manipulate the results have been largely pre-empted,'' said Ramon Casiple, executive director of Institute for Political and Electoral Reforms.

Before the election, analysts had said any effort by government officials to manipulate the results would lead to a public outcry and possible unrest.

Arroyo has still not managed to shake off allegations that she cheated in the 2004 presidential election and the charges have led to two efforts to impeach her.

Still, there were many questionable incidents during counting this year.

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) failed to tally any votes today because about 840,000 votes from at least three provinces in the south could not be accounted for.

About 300,000 votes from the southern province of Maguindanao have also been set aside after 12 pro-administration candidates swept the elections there. At least 19 candidates got no votes at all and there was an unusually high 96 per cent voter turnout.

REUTERS KN ND1808