RIYADH/MANILA, 18 Sept. — Community leaders in the Kingdom, hoping to find someone to save the absentee voting bill from getting murdered in Congress, are agog over the arrival of top Philippine journalists here in Riyadh.
"We are dismayed by what they did to the bill in the Senate and the House. It seems we have nowhere to run but to the leaders of Philippine media," said Bert Barriga, one of the convenors of the International Coalition of Overseas Voting Rights (ICOVR) chapter in Riyadh.
"We are pinning our hopes on media not only to help enlighten our legislators but also to actively take up the cause of overseas Filipinos," he said.
Barriga said he and other absentee voting advocates in the national capital hope to seek an audience with the journalists, who arrived last night for a week-long tour on invitation of the Saudi Ministry of Information.
The high-level delegation is composed of Max V. Soliven, chairman of The Philippine Star; Isagani Yambot, publisher of the Philippine Daily Inquirer; Lourdes Molina-Fernandez, editor-in-chief of Today; Jose Galang, chief editor of the Manila Times; and Carmen Pedrosa, a columnist of The Philippine Star.
Advocates said the refusal of the House leadership to at least calendar the AVB for debate during the last session was tantamount to an outright denial of overseas Filipinos’ right to vote.
The Philippine Constitution of 1987 allows overseas Filipinos to vote in Philippine elections for the president, vice president, senators and party-list representatives.
For this right to be exercised, an enabling law has to be enacted. More than 70 bills on absentee voting had been filed in Congress over the last 15 years but not one had prospered.
A common fear raised by legislators opposed to absentee voting is that OFW votes may be easily manipulated by whoever is in the administration.
When a joint committee of Congress led by Sen. Edgardo Angara conducted public hearings abroad in March and April, they also raised the same concern. But in the end, the committee endorsed the approval of the measure, saying that overseas Filipinos should not be denied their right of suffrage.
A statement by the Angara delegation said that allowing OFWs to vote would in fact help cleanse Philippine elections because "it would not be easy for politicians to bribe overseas voters who are economically better off than most of the voters at home."
ICOVR leaders said it is either fear of OFW votes being misused or plain selfishness that is keeping legislators from giving their nod to absentee voting.
"Right now, the bill is on death bed and we are fervently praying that it will recover. That is why we are seeking help from our media top brass to help enlighten our legislators," Barriga told Arab News.
Lip service to OFWs
In Manila, Sen. Aquilino Pimentel Jr. said the Arroyo administration’s lack of interest in the cause of overseas Filipinos is the biggest hindrance to the passage of the AVB.
He said the administration is more interested in the bill granting a legislative franchise to the National Transmission Corp. (Transco) and the bill creating a Special Purpose Asset Vehicle (SPAV), both of which will benefit big business.
"I am disappointed with the Senate run by the administration senators because the absentee voting bill was not taken up. Not once was the bill debated on the floor," said Pimentel, one of those who conducted public hearings among OFWs.
He said he even wrote Senate Majority Leader Loren Legarda to calendar the AVB for floor debates but the deliberations never materialized.
Legarda had said during the session that it was the absence of Angara, the principal sponsor, that caused them to postpone the debates for the day.
But Sen. Sergio Osmena III was reported by Manila media as saying the majority was trying to hold approval of the AVB as a bargaining chip in exchange for the minority’s support of the Transco and SPAV bills, both sponsored by the majority.
Pimentel said the continued foot-dragging on the AVB by Congress has caused frustration among OFWs, many of whom doubt whether the government is really serious in allowing them to exercise their voting rights.
"We should not disregard the absentee voting bill because this is a significant way of repaying our OFWs for their contributions to the economy in terms of their annual remittances," he said.
Pimentel acknowledged, though, that the delay in the passage of the measure was due to the objection of some lawmakers on certain provisions of the bill.
Some want the counting and tabulation of the votes to be done at the main office of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) in Manila, he said.
Rep. Teodoro Locsin Jr., for one, insists on face-to-face voting and registration. "If they want to vote, they will not mind travelling long distances to go to the embassy," he said.
OFW groups, including those in the Kingdom, have proposed that counting be done right after voting in Philippine embassies and consulates with community organizations designated as watchdogs to protect the sanctity of their votes.
Counting the votes in Manila, they argued, would only give cheats – of which the Philippines has plenty – the chance to tamper with the ballots.
