MANILA, 11 September 2003 — A statement by Commission on Elections chief Benjamin Abalos blaming migrant workers’ groups for the low turnout of absentee voting registrants has stirred a hornet’s nest. The loudest protest came from Saudi Arabia, which hosts the largest population of Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs). Mike Bolos, board member of the Center for Migrant Advocacy (CMA) and co-convenor of the International Coalition for Overseas Filipino Voting Rights (ICOFVR), said Abalos “has only himself and nobody else to blame.” “He was not supportive of the bill even while it was still being deliberated upon in both houses of Congress. He was very vocal about all the negative reasons why it should not see the light of day and it would have derailed if he had his way,” Bolos said from Riyadh. He added that Abalos “did not stop trying to derail the OAV Law even when the bill was finally passed into law,” employing all sorts of delaying tactics like saying the bill had no funding and saying it had insufficient funding when the budget was finally provided. From eastern city of Dharan, Tony Ranque said: “This is what we call ‘passing the buck.’ Abalos has not done anything for the OAV since Day 1 and now he is blaming us! This is not right!”
Abalos had earlier told reporters that some NGOs earlier pledged to launch an information campaign on absentee voting to familiarize Filipinos living abroad on the registration proceedings and requirements.
Now that the Overseas Absentee Voting (OAV) had become a law, he said, the NGOs are asking for funds to finance an information campaign.
The Comelec had said it was expecting at least 2.5 million Filipinos abroad to register as absentee voters worldwide for the 2004 elections.
Forty days after the registration started on Aug. 1, however, only about 120,000 have registered so far, with Hong Kong having the most number of registrants, followed by Saudi Arabia.
Catherine Maceda, vice chair of the Overseas Absentee Voting Secretariat (OAVS) said, registration has so far been climbing at a rate of almost 50 percent a week.
Rashid Fabricante, also co-convenor of ICOFVR and action officer of the Pusong Mamon Task Force (PMTF) in Riyadh, said Abalos’ statement was unfair because the Comelec had not even consulted at least one of the 298 OFW groups in Saudi Arabia when the poll body was drafting the implementing rules and regulations, or IRR, for the OAV law.
In Hong Kong, Daphne Ceniza-Kuok of the CMA and the ICOFVR, said: “Hong Kong is an example of how things could have been had Congress and the Comelec had more foresight and tried to know better the situation of Filipino communities abroad.”
There, she said the Philippine Consulate holds a leaders forum every third Sunday of the month to discuss issues faced by the community.
“It is in this forum where preparation for the OAV have been done long before Comelec came out with the IRR,” Ceniza said. “We call on Chairman Abalos to do his homework and fix his backyard first,” she added.
Marvin Bionat, member of Empower (Global Coalition for the Political Empowerment of Overseas Filipinos) and ICOFVR co-convenor in New Jersey, said “when we distributed flyers here in New England, we created and produced them using our own funds. Our websites, created solely to disseminate information on registration and the 2004 elections are maintained using our own resources.”
“We do what we can to compensate for the deficiencies of the law and support Comelec’s efforts, and here comes Abalos blaming us. He should learn to watch his mouth,” said Bionat.
Yuko Takei, a Filipino married to a Japanese national but still working to promote absentee voting, scoffed: “So, now it is the fault of the absentee voters and the AV advocators, when they have not made things easier for all OFWs!!”
Takei was referring to the many obstacles that Philippine lawmakers have placed in the OAV law, such as disallowing registration and voting by mail. Under the law, OFWs has to physically appear before the Philippine embassies or consulates in their places of work to register and vote.
OFW groups have earlier warned that such restrictions would discourage OFWs from participating in the exercise since many of them live very far from the embassies or consulates.
Ellene Sana, officer-in-charge of the CMA, said it was not fair of Abalos.
“He shouldn’t forget that we NGOs tried to help in information dissemination despite the ‘constitutional’ restrictions (having non-Filipino members) placed on them,” Sana said. “We believe we have done more than our fair share of the work in this regard. And we still pledge to do more if only to convince ourselves that we have given it our best shot given all the attendant limitations of the law and the human and material resources at our disposal,” Sana, who personally answered e-mail queries on the absentee voting process from OFWs around the world, said.
