MANILA, 23 April 2004 — Migrante, a party-list of Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs), yesterday complained of alleged anomalies and harassment in the conduct of overseas absentee voting in Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia.
In a press statement, Migrante party-list chair Connie Bragas Regalado said their poll watchers in Hong Kong have reported that the Special Board of Election Inspectors (SBEI) there were caught instructing a voter to deposit a blank ballot in the ballot box.
Regalado said the inspectors were also caught telling two voters that "there is no need for them to vote for a party list," and of violating Commission on Election (Comelec) rules by talking over a phone while inside a precinct, and refusing to answer procedural questions from voters. "Alarmingly, an SBEI chairman at Hong Kong's precinct 13 also refused to reveal serial numbers of ballots used for the day, even though Angie Aguilar of the OAV Secretariat admitted it is not wrong or illegal for poll watchers to obtain ballot serial numbers," she said.
Migrante also accused the Philippine Embassy in Riyadh of having two of its chapter members arrested by the local police.
"We denounce the Philippine Embassy, particularly embassy official Addy Cruz, for ordering the arrest of two of our members. The arrest order was malicious and pure harassment," said Regalado.
She alleged that Vice Consul Adrian Cruz had Saudi police arrest engineer Domingo Yalung and Danny Morales because the two were allegedly "selling" sample ballots inside embassy premises.
She said Yalung told her by phone that they were picked up by Saudi police from the embassy's parking lot at 8:45 a.m. and detained until 4 p.m. She did not say when the incident happened.
Cruz, in a phone interview with Arab News, said he did remind Yalung during the first weekend of the absentee voting exercise that distributing sample ballots close to a polling precinct was banned by law.
"I saw Mr. Yalung right in front of the gate of the ambassador's office and I saw him distributing something. When I called his attention, he angrily approached me and challenged me to have him jailed," he said.
Cruz said he also wanted to tell Yalung that what he was doing could also keep his party, Migrante, at risk of being disqualified if some supporters of other parties file a complaint against him.
Yalung, however, reportedly refused to listen and kept daring him to call the police. He said because of Yalung's allegedly abusive behavior, embassy security officers "politely escorted him outside of embassy premises" and that was the last he had heard of him.
Days after the incident, he was a rumor circulating in Batha (city center) that Cruz had Yalung detained. He said he later found out that Saudi authorities held Yalung because they suspected him of distributing religious materials outside the embassy. "It seems easy for someone to accuse me of having him jailed, but that's not true," he said.
Cruz lamented that "Migrante did not even ask my side when the embassy and Migrante have a good working relationship through Mr. Onciones," especially in the campaign for overseas absentee voting.