JEDDAH, 13 May 2004 — Filipinos in Saudi Arabia have given incumbent Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo a convincing victory in their country’s first overseas absentee voting exercise.
Arroyo got a total of 22,377 votes in Riyadh, Alkhobar and Jeddah. Sen. Panfilo Lacson, a former national police chief, was next with 13,597.
Fernando Poe Jr., an immensely popular actor, was a poor third with 9,642 votes.
Television evangelist Eddie Villanueva was fourth with 5,393 votes, while former Senator Raul Roco, who almost pulled out of the presidential race due to illness, got 5,017 votes.
In the vice presidential race, Arroyo’s running mate Noli de Castro got 26,601 votes, while Poe’s teammate Loren Legarda had 21,728. Two other candidates each got less than a thousand votes.
Interestingly, the results in Riyadh, Alkhobar and Jeddah were of a uniform pattern.
Arroyo always came first, Lacson second, and Poe third.
This was also true in the vice presidential contest, with De Castro always first and Legarda second.
Even in the senatorial race, the pattern was the same for the top six winners in all three voting centers.
Trade Secretary Manuel Roxas was a consistent first, followed by former Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim, former Tourism Secretary Richard Gordon, former senator Miriam Defensor Santiago, and re-electionist senators Rodolfo Biazon and Robert Barbers.
Only 12 Senate seats are at stake. The others who made it were Pia Juliana Cayetano, actor Bong Revilla, re-electionist Sen. Aquilino Pimentel Jr., actor-governor Manuel Lapid, former senator Orlando Mercado, and actress Boots Anson Roa.
Namfrel volunteers said the figures above did not include votes from one of 29 precincts in Jeddah. It was not clear as of last night why and how many votes were yet unaccounted for.
More than 97,000 Filipinos in Saudi Arabia are registered as absentee voters but only 57,768, or about 60 percent, cast their ballots during the month-long absentee voting that ended Monday.
Taha Guinomla, administrative officer of the consulate in Jeddah, and in-charge of the absentee voting in Jeddah, attributed two major reasons for the low turnout: many OFWs are still on vacation and lack of transportation.
Most of those who have not voted are working in places hundreds of kilometers away from the polling precincts in Jeddah, Riyadh and Alkhobar.
The May 10 Philippine poll was a combined national and local election, with more than 7,000 positions at stake. Overseas Filipinos, however, are allowed by law to vote only for the president, vice president, senators and party-list representatives.
(Additional input from Dinan Arana in Alkhobar and Bien Custodio in Riyadh.)
