DHAHRAN, 21 March 2004 — Vote wisely. Vote for Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

This, in short, is the message of Filipino workers in the Eastern Province who have banded themselves to campaign among their compatriots in the Kingdom and their families in the Philippines.

Launched on Thursday at the Dhahran Palace Hotel, the group called GMA for President Movement said one of its most urgent tasks is to conduct an education campaign among Filipinos not only to go out and vote but also to vote intelligently.

By that, the group said, voters should go for Arroyo because she is the most qualified and prepared among those standing for president in the May 10 Philippine election.

Buddy Alpuerto, chairman of the movement, told Arab News that community leaders in the region voluntarily joined hands to support Arroyo so that she can continue carrying out her programs benefiting Overseas Filipino Workers.

“President Arroyo had made a lot of progress in her administration, particularly for the good of the OFWs. However, we want to give our unsolicited support to get her programs be fully implemented,” Alpuerto said.

The group also intends to be the working partner of the government in formulating policies beneficial to migrant workers.

Sammy Perez of Ras Tanura said Filipinos working abroad should not forget that it was Arroyo who pushed for the passage of the Overseas Absentee Voting Act of 2003, which gives OFWs the chance to vote in this year’s national election.

Although the election in the Philippines is on May 10, registered overseas workers have been allowed to vote early, starting March 11 for seafarers and April 11 for land-based workers.

More than 96,000 OFWs have registered in Saudi Arabia, with about 22,000 of them based in the Eastern Region. The rest registered in Riyadh and Jeddah.

Perez explained that since the number of registered expatriates (more than 400,000) is not enough to elect a president, they have widened their targets by campaigning for Arroyo and her team both in the Kingdom and at home. “The big votes for Arroyo will not come from the OFWs in Saudi Arabia, but from our families back home who will surely support our objectives,” Perez said.

Other leaders present during the launching ceremony admitted that there are only two presidential candidates aside from Arroyo who are being supported by other OFW groups in the Kingdom.

They are former Education Secretary Raul Roco and Senator Panfilo Lacson. The group did not mention the name of the popular action movie “king” Fernando Poe Jr., the frontrunner in opinion surveys conducted in the Philippines for the past weeks.

They said what the Philippines need today is a leader who has a strong personality, has a good education, and had a long experience in governance.

“If anybody can just join a presidential race without any formal education and had no experience at all in politics or government service, then we will expect the worst on his presidency,” one Arroyo campaigner said.

The remark was a clear reference to Poe, a high school dropout who is perceived to be running for president to save his best friend, Joseph Estrada, from being sentenced to death on charges of plunder. Estrada, an actor like Poe, was ousted in an uprising in January 2001 amid charges that he had abused his position to illegally amass wealth.

Poe’s entry into the presidential race late last year caused the peso and stocks to plummet amid fears that, like Estrada, he would mismanage the economy.

Unlike Estrada who had been a town mayor, a senator and vice president, before occupying the high seat in Malaca?ang Palace, Poe had never held public office. His only claim to fame was killing Japanese soldiers, gangsters and other criminals in his many movies.

To vote for Poe, said the pro-Arroyo movement in Dammam, would be a bad legacy that Filipino parents would give their children. “It might give the wrong signal to our children that education is no longer important. If that happens, they would just join the show business, hoping that in the future they will be elected to any government post,” one of the movement’s leaders said.