MANILA, 1 September — Even undocumented Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) will be allowed to vote if the Absentee Voting bill approved by three House of Representatives committees would be enacted into law.

On Wednesday, the joint committees on suffrage, electoral reforms and foreign affairs approved the measure for floor deliberation.

An offshoot of 14 measures filed by 15 congressmen, including House Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr., the bill mandates that the minimum requirement for an OFW to be able to vote overseas is that he holds a Philippine passport.

Absentee voting advocate Noel Esquela, executive director of eLagda, said this provision “will allow as many Filipinos as possible (to vote) regardless of whether they are documented or undocumented.”

The undocumented OFWs are those who have no documentation in the host country, thus working illegally.

“We should not be holding our citizens hostage to the fact that they don’t have this documentation,” Kaibigan (Friends of Filipino Migrant Workers) Executive Director Noel Josue noted.

Lawmakers started looking into the bill after a group of overseas workers and advocates lobbied with de Venecia last week for immediate action.  As a result of last week’s Overseas Filipinos Advocacy Visit to the Philippines, the technical working group of the House committees picked up the consolidated absentee voting bill from the 11th Congress and resubmitted the measure.

They also dispensed with public hearings so that the absentee voting bill will go straight to the House floor for deliberation.

The organizers of the advocacy visit, Kakammpi (Kapisanan ng mga Kamag-anak ng Migranteng Manggagawang Pilipino Inc.), the Platform of Filipino Migrant Organizations in Europe (Platform), Empower (Global Coalition for the Empowerment of Overseas Filipinos) and eLagda, are hopeful that the bill will be passed within the year so that OFWs can vote in 2004.

The group paid a similar visit to Senate President Franklin Drilon. Nonoi Hacbang of Platform told Arab News that Drilon also assured them that the Senate will act promptly on the absentee voting bill.

“The absentee voting right is a recognition of the overseas Filipino as an integral part of the Filipino people,” Hacbang said.

Commission on Elections Commissioner Ressureccion Borra had earlier told the group that the election body would require at least one-and-a-half years to put the necessary mechanisms for absentee voting in place before the 2004 elections.

Alfredo Benipayo, the chairman of the poll body, said the Comelec commissioners are not “very worried” about fraud in the implementation of the absentee voting law because “safeguards can be installed.”