Why few Filipinos abroad register for 2010

PIMENTEL OFFERS EXPLANATION

Veronica Uy
INQUIRER.net
First Posted 14:57:00 07/10/2009

MANILA, Philippines—Despite the massive government campaign abroad, most of the Filipinos overseas have not bothered to register for the 2010 fully automated elections due to worries that their votes won’t be counted properly anyway.

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel Jr. made this statement following a recent trip to Switzerland and The Netherlands, where he met with Filipino communities.

Pimentel lamented the prevailing apathy among overseas Filipinos toward their right of suffrage. The senator was among the lawmakers that pushed for the extension of the right of suffrage to Filipinos overseas, including dual citizen Filipinos, due to their clamor.

“I had the opportunity to talk with a good number of overseas Filipinos. The response to registration for absentee voting for the purpose of computerized elections was very depressing,” he said.

He said many Filipinos in different countries don’t want to register and vote because they are uncertain whether their votes will be counted. The apprehension, he said, stemmed from the massive fraud that tainted the 2004 presidential election in the aftermath of the so-called Hello Garci controversy where the President allegedly influenced a poll official in the counting of votes.

“I had to tell them that their votes can actually make a difference. If only a significant proportion of overseas Filipinos will exercise their voting right, they can be a swing vote in the presidential, vice presidential, and senatorial elections,” he said.

In The Netherlands, Pimentel said he was told that the expatriate Filipinos did not want to register as absentee voters because they were afraid that this would jeopardize their status as dual citizens.

To entice Filipinos abroad to avail of their right to vote for their political leaders in their homeland, Pimentel thus stressed the urgency of amending the Overseas Absentee Voting Act (Republic Act 9l89).

His proposed amendments: require Philippine embassies and consulates to put up mobile registration centers in areas with huge concentration of overseas Filipino workers; and direct government agencies concerned to conduct pre-departure registration of overseas Filipino workers in international airports and seaports in the country.

The proposed amendments to the Overseas Absentee Voting Act are contained in Senate Bill 2333 filed by Senators Pimentel and Manuel Villar which primarily aim to help Filipinos abroad overcome the problems in registering and casting their ballots.

The Pimentel-Villar bill also provides that overseas absentee voters, including seafarers, may vote by the Internet, subject to the necessary safeguards.

Unless these amendments are passed by Congress, he said absentee voting will be a very expensive exercise that will have negligible impact on the outcome of national elections.

Pimentel said the setting up of mobile voters registration centers will benefit OFWs in countries like Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Canada, and United States where they reside and work in provinces or states that are too faraway in cities where Philippine embassies and consulates are based.

(Philippine embassies and consulates are tasked with receiving and processing the registration of OFWs for overseas voting. They also function as polling centers where the OFWs cast their ballots and where the votes are counted.)

Of the estimated more than 4 million qualified overseas Filipinos, only 360,000 registered for the 2004 elections, of whom only 65 percent or 233,092 cast their votes.

In the 2007 elections, records show that 503,000 overseas Filipinos registered but a mere 21 percent or 8l,732 cast their ballots. The sharp decline in the actual voting was partly explained by the fact that the last political exercise did not entail voting for the president and vice president.