MANILA, 3 October 2003 — The Commission on Election has rejected calls for an extension of the registration for absentee voters.
Comelec chairman Benjamin Abalos said there is simply no more time left for such extensions.
“The law requires that we come out with the list of voters within 120 days before the election,” Abalos said.
If the commission acceded to the clamor of some legislators to extend the deadline beyond September 30, he said, the poll body would not be able to meet the requirement it would be violating the very law it is supposed to uphold.
The commission has until Nov. 27 to come up with the overseas absentee voters’ list. Those whose applications for registration have been disapproved would have to file with the local municipal trial court for inclusion proceedings. Comelec officials said this would usually take time.
Yesterday, the tally of the Overseas Absentee Voting Secretariat (OAVS) in Manila rose to more than 350,000, with Saudi Arabia overtaking Hong Kong in terms of the highest number of registrants.
Catherine Maceda, vice chair of the secretariat, said they are still waiting for reports from other posts abroad but the overall total is not likely to exceed 360,000.
Saudi Arabia’s total for the registration centers in Riyadh, Alkhobar and Jeddah reached 97,134.
Hong Kong and other consular posts in China totaled 90,847, with 90,233 coming from Hong Kong.
The other countries in the top 10 were Singapore (24,009), Italy (20,115), the United Arab Emirates (17,907), Kuwait (15,030), Taiwan (11,620), Brunei (9,697), Japan (8,403), and Northern Marianas (6,658). Registration in the other countries reached 48,609.
The turnout of registrants in the United States, Canada and Australia were dismal.
Maceda lauded non-government organizations (NGOs) for helping the OAVS with their own information dissemination initiatives. An NGO in Japan was responsible for mobile registration done during the early morning hours at some of the bars employing Filipinos. These Filipinos were awake only at dawn and were asleep for most of the day. Other NGOs even went as far as distributing flyers about the registration at supermarket lots which is forbidden in places in the Middle East.
While Saudi Arabia had a higher number of registrants, Hong Kong is considered to have performed better, with probably more than 60 percent of the OFWs there participating. There are an estimated 900,000 or so Filipinos in Saudi Arabia, which means slightly more than 10 percent registered.
OAVS officials noted, however, that community organizations in Saudi Arabia campaigned just as hard as those in Hong Kong but many Filipinos in Saudi Arabia are working in cities or towns very far from the registration centers.
