MANILA, 20 September 2003 — Senate President Franklin M. Drilon has asked the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) to check reports that some of its foreign posts are collecting fees from overseas Filipinos seeking to avail themselves of their rights under the absentee voting and dual citizenship laws.

If such reports are true, he said these should be stopped immediately because Filipinos abroad should not be treated like “milking cows who have to pay various fees at every turn” for the restoration of their political and civil rights.

Drilon was in the forefront of the passage of the Overseas Absentee Voting (OAV) Act, which enables Filipinos working or living abroad to participate in Philippine national elections.

He was also the main sponsor of the Dual Citizenship law, which enables Filipinos who acquire citizenship in another country to retain their Philippine citizenship. The same law allows those who have renounced their Philippine citizenship in favor of a foreign one to reacquire it on certain conditions.

The enactment of the Dual Citizenship law, which took effect on Sept. 18, was expected to encourage more overseas Filipinos to register for the absentee voting exercise.

Only a few hundred Filipinos in countries such as the United States and Canada have registered so far because of a requirement in the OAV law that an applicant had to execute an affidavit of intent to return to the Philippines within the next three years.

As of 8 a.m. yesterday, the total number of registrants worldwide was only 175,279, according to Catherine Maceda, spokeswoman of the OAV Secretariat.

She said, though, that there was a big surge in the number of registrants lately and that if the rate of increase continues until the end of the registration period (Sept. 30), the number of registrants could come close to half a million.

Drilon said the dismal turnout could be partly attributed to the “birth pains associated with a pilot undertaking” like this OAV.

“But if reports of OFWs being asked to fork out hard-earned money just to be able to register are true, then they (Philippine embassies and consulates) are giving our countrymen abroad more reasons not to go out of their way to register,” Drilon said.

Drilon had earlier asked the DFA to recall an order requiring former Filipinos in the United States availing themselves of dual citizenship privileges to pay a fee of $25 before they could take their oath of allegiance to restore Philippine citizenship.

Drilon also noted that there was no reason for Philippine embassies and consulates to collect registration fees from overseas Filipinos who wanted to exercise their absentee voting rights.

He said overseas Filipinos wanting to register for the 2004 elections often make sacrifices as they have to absent themselves from work and pay for their own trips to usually far-off Philippine embassies and consulates.

According to Drilon, OFWs in Saudi Arabia were reportedly told by the Philippine Embassy that the collection of registration fees had the approval of the DFA. The fee was reportedly cut to half its original amount after the registrants raised a howl of protest.

The embassy could not be immediately contacted but OFWs who have registered with the consulate in Jeddah yesterday said they were never charged any fee in registering. “We were not charged a single halala, even for the photocopying of our iqama,” one of the registrants told Arab News.

In a letter to Drilon on Wednesday, Foreign Affairs Secretary Blas Ople explained that “the $25 fee being collected when a person submits his oath of allegiance is the regular notarial fee being charged by Philippine Foreign Service Posts to administer oaths.”

Ople denied that government was charging the fee for reacquiring Philippine citizenship, clarifying reports that a price has been placed on the reacquisition of Philippine citizenship under R.A. 9225, the Citizenship Retention and Reacquisition Act of 2003.