MANILA, 8 August 2003 — Officials yesterday appealed to Filipinos abroad to start coming out in droves and register for the Philippines’ first overseas absentee voting exercise.
Foreign Affairs Secretary Blas Ople said OFWs should not wait for the last few days to register so as not to be turned off by long queues.
He also asked the country’s foreign services posts worldwide to double their efforts in getting OFWs to register.
“We were forecasting the population abroad who would register at 1.7 million but as of 1 o’clock this afternoon (after one week’s registration), not more than 8,000 have registered,” Ople lamented at a press conference.
Commission on Elections chairman Benjamin Abalos said that even in the United States where Filipinos were most vocal in demanding their right to ote in Philippine elections, only 500 Filipinos have registered so far.
There are about 2.5 million Filipinos in the US out of about 7 million worldwide.
The Comelec said 4,000 of those who have registered were based in Asia, of which more than 3,000 were in Hong Kong.
The number of registrants in Saudi Arabia, which has an estimated 900,000 Filipinos, was also said to be dismal. But officials said that was expected of the first week because the data-capturing machines for Riyadh and Jeddah were not yet ready.
Ople yesterday said he expects the number of registrants to jump in the next few days, now that the machines have been cleared by the Saudi customs bureau and the establishment of a voter registration center in Al-Khobar had been allowed by the host government.
Ople said the Saudi decision to allow the additional center in the Eastern Province “is the proverbial shot in the arm for absentee voting in the country.
“Thank goodness for countries like Saudi Arabia. Based on the Saudi Arabian experience, I expect more foreign governments to be lenient and allow greater flexibility with the establishment of satellite registration and voting centers.
“The Philippine government deeply appreciates the cooperation given by the government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia that will allow our countrymen to exercise their right to vote,” Ople said.
He registered his concern that most foreign posts had small premises, not enough to accommodate the expected large number of registrants and voters since some countries said that actual voting will be allowed only within embassy premises.
DFA officials also challenged OFWs in Saudi Arabia to lead the way by campaigning others to register.
Catherine Maceda, acting head of the DFA’s Overseas Absentee Voting (OAV) Secretariat, said the posts in Saudi Arabia have been sent the most machines. The embassy in Riyadh has 33, of which 10 will be sent to Alkhobar. Jeddah has 21. She said some posts got only one machine each.
Maceda also demonstrated the process again to Arab News to belie complaints of some registrants that the process took as much as 20 to 30 minutes and required the filling up of numerous forms.
She said the OAV Secretariat has been working on 24-hour shifts to verify the passports and other identification documents of the registrants abroad, almost instantaneously.
In the morning, the secretariat attends to registration in Asian countries, in the afternoon, Middle Eastern and at night, American and European countries, all depending on the time zones.
She expressed concern that many overseas Filipinos might be put off by expected queues and backlog toward the end of the absentee registration period (Aug. 1 to Sept. 30) because of Filipinos‚ penchant for putting things off until the last minute.
