MANILA, 20 April — The quest to enfranchise the millions of Filipinos working abroad continues, with the objective to give them the right of absentee voting by the 2004 elections
Many have called this a pipe dream, saying that the Philippine government had better things to spend money on, namely the computerization of voting in the Philippines itself. Many critics of absentee voting have also cited fraud concerns, claiming that votes of Filipinos abroad could more easily be tampered with (as if local votes are not being tampered with to begin with!).
Many others and I have been advocating the need to give Overseas Filipino Workers the right to vote in national elections for several years now. During the Ramos administration it seemed that Congress was on the verge of passing a law enabling this, but nothing happened. The Commission on Elections complained that it didn’t have the infrastructure or the budget to deal with the millions of OFW ballots that would pour in from abroad. Politicians, perhaps afraid that they wouldn’t be able to clearly influence the OFW vote (because of the geographic distance and the fact that OFWs are generally more aware of important issues), put the issue on the backburner.
With the recent resurgence in good governance activism, perhaps most vividly displayed by Vicente Romano III’s web-based e-Lagda campaign to oust former President Joseph Estrada, voting rights for OFWs has again assumed a front-seat position. The e-Lagda.com website has a section devoted to campaigning for absentee voting (http://www.elagda.com).
Another site that is devoted to OFW voting rights is the Philippine Update site (www.philippineupdate.com/vote.htm). It’s an excellent site that is spearheading the fight for absentee voting rights, and has been able to get many leading newspapers to write editorials supporting OFW voting rights (including the Inquirer) and garnered the support of leading politicians, including President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
Also on the Internet are various email discussion groups on the subject. Two of the leading ones are the [email protected] group and the Bantay Kabayan group also on Yahoo ([email protected]) that was started by former OFW Rhoel Mendoza.
If this concerted effort to educate and enlighten both OFWs and politicians in the Philippines continues, then I’m sure Congress will not be able to ignore one of the noblest aspirations of OFWs. After all, can politicians really ignore the wishes of OFWs whose $6 billion or so yearly dollar remittance through banks had helped keep the Philippine economy afloat? Not for long.
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Migrante International, a non-governmental group that campaigns for the rights of migrant workers, was not happy with the comment made by a Philippine diplomat in my April 13th “E-democracy” column (http://www.manilamoods.com/archive/050401.shtml).
Here is the portion they found offensive: “A Filipino diplomat recently complained to me about some of the campaigns launched by Migrante, a Manila-based group that fights for migrant workers’ rights. He said: ‘As for Migrante, they have the curious habit of condemning OFWs to death row when they are actually just still in detention, with no final judgment yet passed on their cases.
One example is Violeta Miranda, a nurse in Riyadh who Migrante claimed was actually executed or about to be executed in 1999, when in reality she was able to come home due to the efforts of the embassy and former President Joseph Estrada.’ “Despite this minor criticism of Migrante, the diplomat told me that the group had been right on target many times, especially with the Al-Nasban case.”
Ramon Bultran, the managing director of The Asia-Pacific Mission for Migrant Filipinos, wrote to me and said: “With regard to Migrante screaming its head out, we know for a fact that it was Violeta’s family who sought out the help of Migrante International regarding the case because they felt that the government was not doing enough to help her.
As written in an earlier statement of Migrante, it took more than two months for our government officials to visit her even if the family had reported the case to the Embassy earlier.
“The case of Violeta can be compared to that of Flor Contemplacion and Sarah Balabagan. If it were not for public condemnation of the charges against them, the Philippine government would rather have remained silent so as not to jeopardize Singapore-Philippine relations and Sarah would have not been freed that early, or would have suffered a worse fate. As depicted in the Flor Contemplacion movie, the Philippine diplomat in Singapore stated, ‘Why risk straining relations with another country just for a domestic helper.’
“Or like the case of the stranded workers in Saudi in 1997. Our 2,000 kababayans would have not been repatriated if it were not for the efforts of themselves and their families with the assistance of Migrante and its member organizations and network worldwide.”
