GOD, guns and goons usually make Philippine elections a mixture of fiesta and farce, but a new terrorist threat has turned tomorrow’s presidential poll into a deadly serious business.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo — petite, 57, daughter of a president, born to privilege and sharply articulate — is clinging to a narrow lead in a field of five candidates.

Hard on her heels is film star Fernando Poe Jr — a high-school dropout turned movie idol of the poor, a man of 64 who has never held public office. Now he is the chosen candidate of Imelda Marcos and her cronies from an era when the Philippines was more a private fiefdom than a country.

“You can trust him because not only has he the heart but the soul as well,” Imelda gushed last week. “If a man has soul then that’s all that matters.”

To sanctify Poe’s candidacy, she took the star to pay homage at the glass coffin containing the preserved remains of her husband Ferdinand Marcos, who fell from power in a popular revolt in 1986.

Foreign governments, which do not trust Poe and his backers, are holding their breath to see if Arroyo can pull off a victory. Their fears are heightened by fresh evidence that the Philippines has become a haven for Al-Qaeda terrorists and a weak link in America’s alliance against them.

The government has come under growing pressure to show that it can deliver security after a series of terrorist strikes and scares. The capture of six suspected terrorists was followed by a warning from Arroyo that the authorities had “pre-empted a Madrid-level attack” on trains and shopping malls in Manila in the run-up to the election.

The Philippines dispatched a small contingent of troops to Iraq, sought American aid against its own Islamic insurgents in the southern islands and won a glowing endorsement from President George W Bush on a state visit here last year. Arroyo leads the only majority Christian country in Asia, a treaty ally of the United States — and a target for militants who claim it was once a Muslim land.

“Al-Qaeda’s links with domestic terrorists are our number one worry,” said Norberto Gonzales, Arroyo’s national security adviser. He disclosed that up to 100 Filipino converts to Islam had been recruited and trained by the Abu Sayyaf terrorist group to act as agents in Manila and other cities.

This weekend the capital has been swarming with police and sniffer dogs, checking shoppers and hotel guests in a bid to impose Israeli levels of security on a teeming metropolis. Both Gonzales and western diplomats said there was “extreme” concern about an outrage at election time.

American and Australian intelligence agencies, working with the Philippines security services, have found convincing links between local Muslim terrorists and the Al-Qaeda front organisation in Asia known as Jemaah Islamiah.

Eduardo Ermita, the defence secretary, revealed that police intelligence operatives had broken up a Jemaah Islamiah logistics cell that received cash transfers from Al-Qaeda. The police arrested Jordan Abdullah, 46, a money trader on the island of Mindanao, seizing a $25,000 payment, which investigators traced back to Hambali, the arrested mastermind of the Bali bombings in Indonesia.

Khadaffy Janjalani, the Abu Sayyaf leader, is hiding in central Mindanao and officials admit that terrorist training camps are flourishing there.

FERRY BOMBING

Western and Philippines intelligence officials believe terrorists caused an explosion on board a ferry in Manila Bay on February 27. The boat sank with 116 dead and missing, which would make the attack the deadliest in Asia since the Bali bombings of 2002.

A government source said a man claiming to be the bomber confessed that he placed a television set containing explosives near his berth in the vessel and then escaped before it set sail.

The device exploded and the “superferry” sank about one hour after leaving port.

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