JEDDAH, 2 March 2007 — Officials of the Philippine Consulate in Jeddah and the embassies in Greece, Kenya and Libya have completed a training program in preparation for the second Philippine overseas absentee voting (OAV) exercise, which starts on April 11.
Held at the Ramada Continental Hotel (formerly Al Harithy Hotel), the three-day training course, which ended on Wednesday, focused on procedures in personal voting, guidelines on accreditation of foreign media, role of watchers, campaigning abroad, the specs of ballot receptacle, preliminaries to counting, rrocedures in counting and the appreciation of ballots.
Director Bartolome Sinocruz of the Philippine Commission on Elections (Comelec) and Henry T. Kison, chief of staff of the Committee on Overseas Absentee Voting (COAV) chaired by Commissioner Florentino A Tuason Jr., also explained to the diplomats how to troubleshoot problems that may arise during the voting and counting of votes.
Among the participants were Consul General Pendosina N. Lomondot of Jeddah; Consul General Eleanor Jaucian and Renell Martinez from Athens, Greece; Arturo Arpia and Pio Tejada from Nairobi, Kenya; Charlie Nabo and Labor Attaché Nasser Mustafa from Tripoli, Libya.
Also completing the training program were Vice Consul Jose V. Jacob, Welfare Officer Abdurajik Samain and other officials of the consulate in Jeddah.
Before coming to Jeddah, Sinocruz and Kison also conducted training exercises in Kuwait for a group of Philippine diplomats from different countries and a second one in Riyadh for another group.
Saudi Arabia was chosen as a training site by the Comelec since it is host to the second biggest Filipino overseas community and the biggest number of OAV registrants.
Of the total number of registered overseas absentee voters 503,151, one-fifth or 105,427 are based in Saudi Arabia, according to preliminary figures from the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA’s) secretariat for the OAV.
The Philippine elections for this year is set on May 14, but overseas absentee voting starts one month ahead. Overseas absentee voting is allowed only for candidates for the 12 Senate seats at stake and party-list seats for the House of Representatives in the forthcoming election.