MANILA, 14 November 2002 — A heretofore unnoticed provision in the absentee voting bill (AVB) passed by the House of Representatives last Oct. 21 could ensure victory for he administration, an advocate based in Manila said.
Noel Esquela, executive director of Internet-based non-government organization (NGO) eLagda, said this could mean the politicization, not of the diplomats as had been feared, but of the Commission on Elections (Comelec).
He told ArabNews this “insidious” provision for pilot-testing of absentee voting was surreptitiously included in the section on coverage. It was supposedly rejected by the technical working groups but was reinserted using different wordings. The words pilot-testing do not appear anywhere in the bill.
Esquela cited Section 4 of House Bill 3570 as saying “the Commission is directed to prioritize the countries for absentee voting, taking into consideration the number of absentee voters therein and the prevailing budgetary constraints.”
“So the Comelec is the only agency which will determine the coverage of the absentee voting law. They should prioritize. And what are the Comelec’s standards? The law is silent on this,” Esquela said. “What is to stop President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo or the Comelec from favoring circumstances which are friendly to the current administration?”
He said an area can actually be chosen for pilot-testing depending on whether or not a certain party can win in the overseas polls there.
This is worse than the possible politicization of ambassadors that Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) spokesman Victor Lecaros envisioned, said Esquela.
According to him, it will be possible that to a certain extent, the ambassador will be under pressure to deliver votes to the administration. The implication of that, he said, is that some diplomat might get involved in supporting candidates, especially if they are placed under pressure by those in power.
Former Sen. Ernesto Maceda suggested that the ability of an ambassador to deliver votes to the administration and its candidates “will become a principal factor in the choice of ambassadors for places where there are large concentrations of overseas Filipinos.”
Esquela claimed that his pronouncements were backed up by independent lawyer Henry Rojas and by other organizations like the Kapisanan ng mga KamagAnak ng Migranteng Mamamayang Pilipino (Kakammpi). A bicameral committee is set to thresh out the disparate versions of the AVB passed in the Senate and in the House of Representatives, the differences being very great.
Sen. Edgardo Angara had earlier said the answer to possible politicization is the mobilization of community organizations abroad and NGOs in the Philippines to help monitor the ballot. Such organizations, Angara said, would form anti-fraud teams to complement the official efforts to fight fraud and manipulate election results.
