DAMMAM/RIYADH, 11 March 2004— No material prizes await Filipino seamen who come to the Philippine Consulate in Jeddah or Embassy in Riyadh to vote tomorrow, but the first to cast his vote would be making history.
Although the Philippine presidential election is set on May 10, seafarers will begin voting tomorrow under the Overseas Absentee Voting law, which is being implemented in countries with substantial Filipino population for the first time.
Voting begins at 8 a.m. tomorrow, ending at 4 p.m. Voting is to be conducted daily until May 10, except on April 8 (Holy Thursday), and April 9 (Good Friday).
Voting for land-based Overseas Filipino Workers, who have registered as absentee voters, begins on April 10.
Absentee voters are allowed to vote for their president, vice president, senators, and party-list representatives.
According to Undersecretary Rafael Seguis of the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs, however, 43 seafarers have registered in the Kingdom and can be accommodated either in Riyadh or Jeddah.
Only the consulate in Jeddah, however, is prepared at the moment, said Seguis, who was in the Kingdom from Friday until Tuesday.
Seguis visited Jeddah, Dammam/Alkhobar and Riyadh to oversee preparations for the Philippines first overseas absentee voting exercise. His other destinations are the United Arab Emirates, Singapore and Hongkong.
Seguis met with community leaders in the Eastern Province on Sunday night and with those in Riyadh the next day. He asked them to help safeguard the ballots to ensure “fair, honest and clean elections.”
“As you have valiantly fought to be allowed to exercise your right of suffrage as Philippine citizens, so should you exert remarkable effort to protect your votes,” he said.
Seguis was the Philippine ambassador to Saudi Arabia in early 2002 when legislators from Manila came to conduct a public hearing in Riyadh on the proposed absentee voting act.
After a short stint as ambassador to Indonesia, he was appointed undersecretary of foreign affairs and he now chairs the Overseas Absentee Voting Secretariat, which is working with the Commission on Election to oversee the electoral exercise abroad.
In Riyadh, Minister and Charge d’Affaires Mariano A. Dumia on Tuesday said the seafarers who have registered in the Kingdom would receive their voter’s IDs when they go to the embassy to vote.
“They have to bring with them an identification card or document and the stub given them when they applied for registration,” he said.