Dirty tricks allegations mar last days of Philippine election campaign

Philippine election rivals traded allegations of dirty tricks and vote-rigging Friday, in the final stretch of an acerbic campaign that is tipped to bring the son of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos to power.

After months of fierce campaigning marked by relentless misinformation and an online whitewashing of the country's violent history, rivals Ferdinand Marcos Jr and Leni Robredo implicated each other in underhand tactics.

Marcos Jr -- the son of the late dictator and notoriously kleptocratic first lady Imelda Marcos -- is predicted to win Monday's poll by a landslide.

"We've already won!" Marcos Jr said. "Just make sure you guard the votes on Monday -- don't sleep... we know that when we sleep, a lot of undesirable things happen."

Robredo has campaigned on a promise to clean up the Philippines' chronically corrupt politics.

Despite her deficit in opinion polls, few are ready to completely rule her out, as febrile rumours swirl about the accuracy of polls that currently put her on 23 percent of the vote versus Marcos' 56 percent.

Unproven allegations that party founder Jose Maria Sison, who lives in exile in the Netherlands, was advising her campaign recently resurfaced in Marcos-allied media.

In a complaint affidavit filed with the prosecutor's office Robredo's spokesman called the allegations "fabricated" and "fictitious".