12 new members of the Senate (Source: cnnphilippines.com) Hanoi (VNA) – Allies of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte won a historic victory in the country’s mid-term elections, according to the final results announced on May 22.
Duterte backers won both houses of the legislature. They won nine out of the 12 seats up for grabs in the 24-member Senate. The remaining were taken by three nominally unaligned politicians.
With the results, the number of seats in the Senate held by opposition is four out of the 24 seats.
The results opened a path for Duterte to make good on his call to bring back the death penalty and advance his project to rewrite the Constitution.
His allies also kept control of the lower House of Representatives, which earlier approved legislation to bring back capital punishment and re-write the Constitution, but faced disapproval from the upper house.
Earlier, on May 13, nearly 62 million Filipinos registered to vote to elect new members of the Senate and the House of Representatives, as well as city councillors and mayors.–VNA
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