Philippine midterm elections: Mocha Uson, ‘queen of fake news’, fails to win House seat

The 37-year-old has a varied résumé: she’s a dancer, model, sex coach and a former assistant secretary of the presidential communications office

But this week the controversial Duterte ally failed to add ‘congresswoman’ to the list

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Mocha Uson fell flat in her attempt to win a seat in the House. Photo: Twitter

Published: 9:45pm, 15 May 2019Updated: 11:19am, 16 May 2019

With 5.78 million Facebook followers and a video endorsement from Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, blogger and social media influencer Mocha Uson probably thought she could sweep into the lower house in the midterm elections.

But the unofficial vote count as of May 15 showed that AA-Kasosyo, the party list group she joined, received 114,956 votes – accounting for 0.61 per cent of votes cast. A party list is a special interest group that runs to get up to three seats each in Congress.

Several hours after polls closed at 6pm on Monday, Uson made a few Facebook posts about her impatience at the slow count.

She was not alone. Several senators seeking re-election said they would investigate Smartmatic, the provider of the vote counting machines, for glitches during the elections and the slow processing of votes.

On Wednesday, the unofficial count barely moved from the previous day’s 95.29 per cent of ballots cast to 96.68 per cent.

Candidates competing for the 12 available seats in the 24-member Senate kept their rankings, including the three incumbent Senators fighting for the 12th and last slot: Nancy Binay, JV Ejercito and Bam Aquino – all of whom hail from political dynasties.

The Commission on Elections has started the official count and is expected to announce this next week, but things are moving slowly, which it has blamed on technology and the slow transmission of data from remote areas to its “central server” in Manila.