MANILA, 7 March 2004 — The Saudi government has approved the use of the International Philippine School of Riyadh (IPSR) as a polling center for the first Philippine overseas absentee voting exercise, the Department of Foreign Affairs has said.
Foreign Undersecretary Rafael Seguis said the IPSR voting precincts will be in addition to those to be set up at the embassy.
Seguis said the good news was reported to the DFA's Overseas Absentee Voting (OAV) secretariat in Manila by Minister Counselor Mariano Dumia, the charge d' affaires of the embassy.
Dumia earlier said the host government approved the embassy's request for use of the International Philippine School of Alkhobar (IPSA) as polling center for Filipinos in the Eastern Region.
With these recent developments, Seguis said he had called the consulate in Jeddah to also request that the International Philippine School of Jeddah (IPSJ) be made an additional voting center.
"We should make the same request so there will also be additional voting centers in Jeddah," said Seguis, who is in overseeing the absentee voting exercise.
Rafael David, chairman of the Filipino Community at Yanbu (Filcoyan), echoed Seguis' remark that the schools would be most suitable for voting since they had classrooms, which means the voting center could have numerous precincts.
Seguis emphasized again that ID cards issued by the Commission on Elections (Comelec) will not be a requirement for absentee voting at this time.
Any identification with the picture or signature of the bearer, including valid iqamas and driver's licenses, will be enough proof provided that the voter's name is in the certified list of overseas absentee voters issued by the Comelec, officials said.
To ease the expected crowding during certain days during the month-long election period, additional election inspectors will be assigned to the Kingdom so that additional voting precincts could be put up as necessary, the OAV secretariat said.
Saudi Arabia has the biggest number of Filipinos registered as absentee voters, with close to 93,000.
Hong Kong is next with about 70,000 registrants.
Voting will begin in the Kingdom and other countries on April 11, running until May 10, the day of election in the Philippines.
Counting will begin at 3 p.m. Manila time, or 10 a.m. in Saudi Arabia. The official results of the balloting abroad will be transported to Manila immediately after the counting by members of the Comelec supervisory teams, two of whom will be sent to Riyadh and another two to Jeddah, the secretariat said.
