ALKHOBAR, 07 August 2003 — Filipinos in the Eastern Province need not go to Riyadh after all to register for the Philippine overseas absentee voting exercise.

Ambassador Bahnarim Guinomla announced the good news yesterday after receiving notice from Saudi officials that the Philippine Embassy may now put up a registration center in Alkhobar.

“This is a happy development for it will make it easier for the Filipinos in the Eastern Province to participate in electoral exercise,” Guinomla said in a telephone interview.

The host government earlier denied the embassy’s request for a registration center in Alkhobar, insisting that registration and voting be done inside the premises of the embassy in Riyadh and the consulate in Jeddah. “In response to our second request, the Saudi government agreed to a field registration center. Maybe they realized that this is just registration and not the actual election,” he said.

Guinomla said the registration center would be set up in the International Philippine School in Alkhobar (IPSA), which has offered space for the 10 data-capturing machines to be used for the registration. Labor Attaché Manuel Roldan told Arab News that if all preparations will go smoothly, the registration may start on Aug. 15.

Guinomla said that there were also requests made by OFW groups in Yanbu, Tabuk, Hafr Al-Batin, Ras Tanura and Jubail, which have big numbers of Filipinos. However, he said, the embassy cannot serve all these requests.

“It will be impossible for us to go to all these places. We don’t have enough personnel and data-capturing machines to be used in those areas,” he said.

He asked all OFWs in the Eastern Province to participate and take advantage of the opportunity to register. “You have requested for it and we have been given the opportunity, so let’s grab it,” he said.

Atoy Esguerra of the Batangas Brotherhood International (BBI) in Jeddah urged other OFWs to not only register but also vote come election time and to convince the undecided to exercise their right of suffrage.

Rashid Fabricante, one of the absentee voting campaigners in Riyadh, said the Saudi government’s recent decision to allow a registration center in Riyadh is a big morale booster to the community.

“It’s not enough that we alone go to register and vote. We should get everybody to participate so that we, the OFWs, could make an impact on our country’s political development,” he said.

Ellene Sana, one of the those in the forefront of the absentee voting addvocacy in Manila, said the latest development was another triumph for the OFWs’ unwavering campaign to exercise right of suffrage.

She urged OFWs not to squander their chance to help select the Philippines’ leaders in next year’s elections.

Proponents of the Overseas Absentee Voting Act, which was passed into law by Congress early this year, believed that the estimated 4 million or so Filipinos abroad who may be qualified to vote could deliver for a “cleansing vote’ for the Philippines’ tainted electoral system. This is because OFWs, being supposedly economically better off than most of the voters at home, are not likely to sell their votes to unscrupulous politicians.

Overseas Filipinos are allowed to vote for the president, vice president, senators and partylist-representatives.