The Philippines will elect a raft of new leaders today, from a president to 297 congressmen to 11,924 municipal councillors.
But, of course, the star of the show will be the presidential race.
The cast of five includes a foundling daughter of an actor and would-be president, a supposed anointed successor of the outgoing president who fell short, a wealthy former Manila mayor and outgoing vice-president, a seasoned politician who first ran for president in 1992, and last, but not least, a trash-talking mayor of Davao City.
The leading man in this show is likely to be trash-talking mayor Rodrigo Duterte. But the question remains whether he will be a protagonist or antagonist.
He is called the “The Punisher” and “Dirty Harry” (after the don’t-follow-the-rules, wise-cracking movie cop played by Clint Eastwood) not just because he is a mayor tough on crime, he also allegedly backs the extra-judicial killing of criminals.
And the subject of killing people is a regular talking point in his stump speeches.
In May last year, he said Manila Bay would be the dumping ground of 100,000 criminals if he was elected president, and damn any international human rights cases.
Even his own flesh and blood are not safe. He told a crowd last month that he would order the death of his children if they were involved in the drug trade.
People on the street love it.
The Philippines has long suffered from economic malaise, rampant corruption and escalating crime.
In Duterte, they see a plainspoken outsider who offers them hope in a language they can understand.
His approval rating is about 30 per cent, with nearest rival Grace Poe trailing by about 10 percentage points.
By all accounts, Dirty Harry is set to clean up at the polls today.
And the political establishment is panicking.
On Saturday, outgoing President Benigno Aquino, a leader who is highly regarded among his people, called on the other four candidates to unite against Duterte, whom he described as a threat against democracy.
The previous day, Manuel Roxas, the standard bearer of the administration, reached out to Poe for talks, but was refused.
What prompted the panic was Duterte’s threats to shut down Congress if politicians remained corrupt, and most recently, if he was impeached over undeclared bank accounts.
His meteoric rise was quite unforeseen. He doesn’t come from the Manila elite that has long dominated Philippine politics, and his rhetoric is outlandish, even churlish.
While his sanguinary language has endeared him to the people and made good copy for the press, Duterte’s record as Davao City mayor is well regarded by the city’s residents.
People there love him for bringing down homicides in what was dubbed the “Nicaragua of Asia” when he first took office in 1988.
Davao City also boasts high literacy rates and a booming economy. He has embarked on public housing programmes, and banned smoking and drinking in public places, a measure he pledges to implement nationwide if elected.
But all this was amid allegations of thuggery. Some quarters in Davao City recall loved ones being killed out of a mere suspicion. It was reported that Duterte had forced a tourist to eat a cigarette butt for flouting his city’s smoking law.
Domestic considerations aside, there are two foreign policy issues that regional watchers will be interested in if Duterte is elected: the South China Sea and the Bangsa-moro peace process.
It was widely reported that Duterte had said he would take a water scooter to one of the disputed shoals in the South China Sea, plant the Philippine flag and tell rival claimant China to go away.
But recently, he has also touted resource sharing with China as a way forward in the dispute.
If Beijing proves receptive to this idea, and approaches the Philippines with a fair arrangement, it could be a model to resolve the long-simmering dispute.
Though three other countries are also party to the maritime row, the exchanges between Philippines and China have been particularly acrimonious.
The Bangsamoro peace process is a cause that Malaysia is heavily invested in.
With the Bangsamoro heartland close to Sabah, and the resulting unrest adversely affecting security in the state, Putrajaya is keen to see the 40-year separatist war in the Southern Philippines end.
Malaysia has brokered a truce between Manila and the leading Bangsamoro group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).
Central to the peace process is for Congress to pass the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL), which was stalled by lawmakers last year after a clash between Philippine security forces and militants drew in MILF fighters. In the aftermath, 44 Philippine commandos were dead.
Duterte has a reputation for respecting indigenous rights, and he has indicated that he would push for Congress to pass the BBL.
That is, of course, if he doesn’t lock up the legislature first.
NST’s foreign editor Syed Azahedi breaks down overseas happenings