JEDDAH, 18 March — Here’s one good reason why Filipinos abroad should continue to campaign for the absentee voting bill and actively participate when the time to vote comes: Overseas Filipino votes will help cleanse the country’s tainted election system.
This comes from Senate Minority Leader Aquilino “Nene” Pimentel, who stressed that since most Filipinos overseas are economically independent, they could bring in quality votes.
“You are free from the politics of patronage that afflicts our country and that makes you a swing vote,” he said in an interview with Arab News and in meetings with the Filipino community in Riyadh on Friday and Saturday.
There are an estimated 7.3 million Filipinos abroad, of which 3.5 million are expected to be eligible to cast their votes. These include the OFWs and immigrants who have not yet renounced their Philippine citizenship or taken up citizenship in another country.
“It’s sad to say that at home, a voter could be bribed with a measly 100 pesos. But for you who are abroad, if a candidate starts giving you P1,000 or P2,000, he gets bankrupt,” added Pimentel, who was a victim of the infamous dagdag-bawas system of cheating during the 1995 senatorial elections.
The senator from Cagayan de Oro was in the Saudi capital as member of the joint Senate-House committee conducting public consultations on the proposal to allow Filipinos abroad to vote in Philippine national elections.
“You who are abroad should really be enfranchised because your vote could serve as a purifying element in our otherwise tainted electoral system,” he added.
It is with this belief, he said, that the minority in the Senate are pushing more vigorously for the passage of the absentee voting bill.
Long overdue
Pimentel and his colleagues said the absentee voting bill should have been passed long before but the fear that overseas votes could be easily manipulated prevailed among opposition lawmakers.
Sen. Edgardo Angara, chair of the Senate committee on constitutional amendments and revision of laws, admitted that it was the advocacy of OFW groups such as the E-Lagda and their public consultations abroad that opened their eyes to reality.
“The more overseas Filipino groups we meet, the more we realize that they should be allowed to participate in the selection of our national leaders,” he said.
During Friday’s public hearing at the Philippine Embassy, fears were also raised that the proposal to conduct polls in embassies and consulates could “politicize” members of the diplomatic service.
According to Angara, he was assured by Ambassador Rafael Seguis that while such fear could not be discounted, the members of the Philippine diplomatic service also do not want the honor and integrity they have long nurtured to be tainted by participating in election fraud.
But the best safeguard, as the legislators pointed, is the vigilance of OFW groups.
To ensure that OFW groups would be given more leeway in monitoring polls held abroad, they said they were pushing for registration, voting and counting of ballots to be held in embassies or consulates.
Angara said this was in accord with the proposal by the International Coalition on Overseas Voting Rights – Saudi Arabia (ICOOFVR) chapter as well as those in other countries.
Angara said they will also spell out acts that will be prohibited, such as candidates and public officials campaigning abroad, tampering with mail, giving false information of qualification to vote, and buying or selling of votes.
To be exempted from the campaign ban are the groups participating in the party-list election.
Community groups in Riyadh, however, asked that only the OFW groups based abroad who are participating in the party-list polls be allowed to campaign abroad.
During last year’s election, most of the groups that participated as OFW groups are based in Manila. Many of their candidates were not even former OFWs.
In the absentee voting measure being deliberated on, overseas Filipinos are to vote only for the positions of president, vice president, senators and party list representatives.