According to the “quick count” conducted by National Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel) volunteers in Jeddah, Riyadh, and Alkhobar, overseas Filipino workers overwhelmingly voted for incumbent Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who garnered a total of 22,377 votes. Sen. Panfilo Lacson was a distant second with 13,597 votes, while Fernando Poe Jr. polled only 9,642 votes.

Surprisingly, evangelist Eduardo Villanueva got more votes, 7,440, than former education secretary Raul Roco, who only received 4,999 votes. But then again, perhaps we shouldn’t be so surprised since there are many born-again Christians among Filipinos working in Saudi Arabia.

Broadcaster-turned senator Noli de Castro led the vice presidential contest, winning 26,783 votes, while Sen. Loren Legarda garnered 21,858 votes.

In the senatorial race, OFWs followed the voting trend back home with a few exceptions: Alfredo Lim placed second in the OFW vote, garnering a total of 40,028 votes, while in the Philippines he was eighth as of Wednesday night. Miriam Defensor-Santiago placed 4th among OFWs, with 32,966 votes; while back home she is in fifth place. Ramon (Bong) Revilla Jr. was not as popular among OFWs as he is back home. In Saudi Arabia he placed eighth with 27,358 votes, while in the Philippines he’s in second place. Finally, actress Boots Anson-Roa made it into the OFWs’ Magic 12, garnering 19,305 votes, placing her at No. 12. In the Philippines, she’s trailing at No. 17.

All the above-mentioned figures, the complete list of which is shown in the table on the right, were based on the tally provided by the Namfrel chapters in Riyadh, Alkhobar and Jeddah. Although unofficial, the Namfrel tallies were based on election returns provided by the Special Board of Election Inspectors in each precinct, Rudy Carillo, Namfrel’s chapter chairman in Jeddah, explained to Arab News yesterday. The returns are now being canvassed by Commission on Election (Comelec) representatives at the Philippine Embassy in Riyadh.

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Comelec Could Learn From OFWs

Complaints are pouring in on how disorganized and chaotic the national election held last Monday in the Philippines was. In contrast, the absentee voting that OFWs were able to engage in for the first time ever, went smoothly and was well-organized.

The activist labor group Migrante was the only voice of criticism of the absentee voting, claiming that they were a failure because they achieved a voter turnout of only 65 percent, and because every single OFW who wanted to vote supposedly wasn’t able to.

To begin with, the Department of Foreign Affairs’ Overseas Absentee Voting secretariat had projected only a 65 percent voter turnout, and that it has achieved. The Philippine Embassy in Riyadh, the Philippine Consulate in Jeddah, and the International Philippine School in Alkhobar were all open for voting seven days a week, 10 hours a day, for 30 days. If any OFW couldn’t make it to one of these voting precincts, well then it is just too bad. I do think, though, that a voting location should have been opened in Abha to serve the many Filipinos working in the southern region of the Kingdom.

Migrante also protested when two of its members were thrown out of the Philippine Embassy in Riyadh and arrested by Saudi police. They claimed political harassment, but when investigated it turned out that they were handing out sample ballots inside the voting area and refused to stop doing so when confronted by an embassy official. In any event, they were held for a few hours and then released unharmed.

It is something of a miracle that OFWs were able to vote in this election at all. The Overseas Absentee Voting law was just approved last year by Congress, and registration of overseas voters took place from August to September 2003. What made the overseas voting a success was the unparalleled cooperation between the Philippine diplomatic missions, the Comelec and the local Filipino communities.

It is true that many OFWs faced long lines at voting precincts and had to sometimes stand in the hot sun, but this was happily endured by OFWs who were so excited to finally be able to vote in Philippine elections while working abroad.

Contrast this with the elections back home where many voters complained of being disenfranchised when their names were missing from voting lists; ballot-snatching took place; intimidation by armed groups reached new heights, and vote-buying was at an all-time high.

Comelec officials kept warning of widespread fraud before and during the election, leaving most with little faith in the electoral authority. Comelec chairman Benjamin Abalos should really resign in shame for his atrocious handling of this election, which ranged from the overprinting of ballots; indelible ink that wasn’t so permanent after all; to a voting list that was so stuffed with anomalies that it’s a miracle that voters were able to vote in their precincts.

Abalos and other Comelec officials should also be punished for the failed automation of the vote counting. Remember the no-bid contract that was given to one company to supply vote-counting machines? It was promptly canceled after a public uproar, but look what we were left with: A quick count that’s really a snail count, and that by a volunteer group, Namfrel. Comelec can’t even give us any count, three days after the election! What a joke!

If a country like India, with more than 600 million voters, can produce quick vote counts, why can’t the Philippines do the same? Counting votes on classroom blackboards, in easily erasable chalk, is pathetic.

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The Need Not to Jump to Conclusions

Opposition candidate Fernando Poe Jr.’s cries of electoral fraud came only a day after the polls closed. One would have liked it if he had waited until next week before protesting in order to properly analyze the election returns.

President Arroyo was initially leading in ABS-CBN’s Halalan 2004 quick count, but was soon overtaken by Poe. I watched the quick count on television all day on Monday, and kept texting the updated results to various friends who were at work and weren’t able to follow the results themselves. The final tally I had before going to bed was 506,214 votes for FPJ, and 407,274 votes for GMA.

Tuesday morning I eagerly switched on my television to find out who was leading, only to see that ABS-CBN had stopped its quick count, and the news ticker line at the bottom of the screen ominously saying that “GMA retains 9% lead over Poe.” Then I remembered that the same thing happened in previous elections. The TV networks provide a really quick count on the first day, only to give way to the excruciatingly slow Namfrel count after that.

I do understand the anger expressed by Poe and other opposition figures, who slammed the polling firm Social Weather Stations for releasing an exit poll it conducted showing GMA would win the election. The news media were flashing the results everywhere, acting as if Arroyo had already been elected president, which was unfair to all the other candidates.

We should all wait and see the official Comelec results when they come out in a few weeks from now. Exit polls are often wrong, and in any case are only a tiny sampling of all those who voted. With an election this close, it could go either way. If Arroyo doesn’t win with a convincing margin of votes, you can be sure the opposition will scream bloody murder.

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