Pinoys in Saudi want changes in OAV registration sked
By JULIE JAVELLANA-SANTOS, abs-cbnNEWS.com
Filipino overseas workers in Saudi Arabia are complaining about the schedule in the registration of overseas absentee voters.
Francis Oca, long-time advocate of overseas absentee voting (OAV) said in a letter to Philippine ambassador to Saudi Arabia Antonio Villamor that “the announced schedule/timing of the registration is not conducive to attaining the DFA/Comelec's (Commission on Elections) goal of registering at least a million OFW voters for the 2010 election.”
The Philippine embassy earlier announced that registrants would be entertained from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday till Wednesday. This would mean there would be no registration on Thursday and Friday, the heaviest days during the two registrations that were previously held. Weekend in Saudi Arabia falls on these two days.
“Parang hindi tama na Saturdays to Wednesdays. Paano naman ‘yong mga 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. ang work, ang time lang e Thursday and Friday?” Oca said.
Roberto Pardinas added: “Oo nga, mahirap masunod ang ganitong schedule kailangan pa lumiban sa trabaho.”
Eli Mua, United OFW head, said “parang joke-joke lang itong ginagawa nila sa OFWs. Those schedules are meant to discredit and downgrade this registration. It is meant to discourage the OFWs from registering; they seem not to help the thousands; just pleasing the few.”
“Hindi puwede mag-absent ang OFW at hindi nagbibigay ng special leave ang mga kumpanya dito. Wala silang pakialam sa registration natin; ang mga managers na ibang lahi would not give a minute for our own OAV - Thursday and Friday lang makakarehistro ang 90% sa mga OFWs. Magagalit naman tayo dito kung ganyan naman na walang walang kunsiderasyon sa atin,” Mua said.
Returnees still in CLOAV
OFWs have even more complaints about the proposed conduct for absentee voting. There are still a lot of cases in the certified list of overseas absentee voters (CLOAV) of misspelled names and overseas workers who had transferred to other countries.
Comelec hopes to correct this during the registration period, which officially started Feb. 1 and would last for seven months until Aug. 31. During this period, all overseas Filipinos who would to cast their ballots in the presidential and national elections in 2010 can sign up at Philippine embassies and consulates abroad.
The outcome of the current registration is expected to have better results since Comelec has been through two previous registrations for OAV.
For the initial registration in 2003 (for the May 2004 elections), there were 361,457 registrants compared to 142,665 during the registration in 2006 (for the 2007 polls).
Comelec attributed the reduction in registrants to the fact that the 2007 polls were merely mid-term elections. They said the 2004 polls were presidential elections thus generating much more interest.
Obstacles
The Overseas Absentee Voting Secretariat of the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA-OAVS), formerly the lead agency in the implementation of OAV, said overseas Filipinos usually fail to comply with registration requirements because of distance (from the nearest embassy or consulate), nature of work, and employer's restrictions.
In many cases, the OAVS said overseas Filipinos are geographically dispersed and work or reside in areas far from the designated registration centers – the embassies and consulates. Unfortunately, the DFA-OAVS said there are only 87 facilities (81 Posts, 3 POLOs and 3 MECOs) which serve as voting centers.
For this reason, the embassies have partnered with employers of large numbers of Filipinos to either bus their employees to a registration site or conduct field registrations.
Community involvement in Saudi Arabia
Nevertheless, the numbers have not been good. This is probably why, this time around, one group is not taking any chances.
The Partidong Pangdaigdigang Pilipino (PPP), which aims to get at least one overseas Filipino worker into Congress in 2010, is partnering with the embassy in Riyadh to conduct voter information and education campaigns there. The biggest concentration of OFWs is in Saudi Arabia, which also happens to be the number one destination of OFWs.
Rudy Dianalan, president of the Jeddah chapter of PPP said "we have brainstormed the theme and one of those brought up also involved 3 P's: Pagrehistro, Pagboto, Pagbabago."
He said they plan to revive camp visits, lectures at various work sites since "this helped generate the bulk of Jeddah's 33,000 registrations and 16,000 voters in 2004." In the 2007 elections where the community had not been involved, there were only 3,000 additional registrants and just 6,000 votes cast.
Similar campaigns are reportedly being waged elsewhere and they all reportedly have community involvement.
Different agenda
In Manila, OAV advocates are continuing to push for amendments to the overseas absentee voting bill.
Ellene Sana, Center for Migrant Advocacy executive director, said the amendments in question will scrap the affidavit of intent to return which has been required of Filipino immigrants abroad. This has also proven a deterrent to Filipinos overseas, particularly to green card holders in the US who fear that their residency will be affected by executing this affidavit.
This requirement was included in the law to keep the overseas Filipino "connected" to the Philippines.
Longer registration period
Sana said her group and other civil society groups as well are lobbying for a longer registration period for overseas absentee voters. They are protesting the “drastic” cut from ten to seven months. From the original Dec. 1, 2008 to August 31, 2009, the registration period has been shortened from February 1 to August 31, 2009.
"I do not understand why the period for continuing registration of local voters is one year while that for overseas absentee voting is only seven months," Sana complained.
John Leonard Monterona, Migrante-Middle East regional coordinator of Migrante International, earlier said that shortening the duration of the OAV registration to seven months is unreasonable, unjust and unconstitutional.
Preparations
But Nicodemo Ferrer, Comelec commissioner in charge of OAV said the time span is enough. Preparations for the 2009 registration began as early as April 2008 when consultations were held with non-governmental organizations, the DFA-OAVS and the Commission on Filipinos Overseas (CFO).
Ferrer then proposed a "massive information dissemination campaign" for the 2010 elections. Filipinos overseas will be allowed to vote for the president, vice-president, senators and party-list representative.
His fellow commissioner, Rene Sarmiento, said a lot of the former registrants will be removed from the voters' lists because the ruling is that if an overseas absentee voter fails to cast his ballot for two consecutive elections, he will have to re-enlist. Since the first registration in 2003, many OFWs have transferred residences and/or ended their contracts and have returned to the Philippines.
This year, Comelec said it is expecting at least a million registrants.
Former DFA Undersecretary Rafael Seguis also said they are targeting one million absentee voters to register for the coming elections. In preparation, Comelec officials in Manila even visited consular posts abroad to train foreign affairs personnel on the process of registering overseas Filipinos.
Filipino overseas workers in Saudi Arabia are complaining about the schedule in the registration of overseas absentee voters.
Francis Oca, long-time advocate of overseas absentee voting (OAV) said in a letter to Philippine ambassador to Saudi Arabia Antonio Villamor that “the announced schedule/timing of the registration is not conducive to attaining the DFA/Comelec's (Commission on Elections) goal of registering at least a million OFW voters for the 2010 election.”
The Philippine embassy earlier announced that registrants would be entertained from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday till Wednesday. This would mean there would be no registration on Thursday and Friday, the heaviest days during the two registrations that were previously held. Weekend in Saudi Arabia falls on these two days.
“Parang hindi tama na Saturdays to Wednesdays. Paano naman ‘yong mga 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. ang work, ang time lang e Thursday and Friday?” Oca said.
Roberto Pardinas added: “Oo nga, mahirap masunod ang ganitong schedule kailangan pa lumiban sa trabaho.”
Eli Mua, United OFW head, said “parang joke-joke lang itong ginagawa nila sa OFWs. Those schedules are meant to discredit and downgrade this registration. It is meant to discourage the OFWs from registering; they seem not to help the thousands; just pleasing the few.”
“Hindi puwede mag-absent ang OFW at hindi nagbibigay ng special leave ang mga kumpanya dito. Wala silang pakialam sa registration natin; ang mga managers na ibang lahi would not give a minute for our own OAV - Thursday and Friday lang makakarehistro ang 90% sa mga OFWs. Magagalit naman tayo dito kung ganyan naman na walang walang kunsiderasyon sa atin,” Mua said.
Returnees still in CLOAV
OFWs have even more complaints about the proposed conduct for absentee voting. There are still a lot of cases in the certified list of overseas absentee voters (CLOAV) of misspelled names and overseas workers who had transferred to other countries.
Comelec hopes to correct this during the registration period, which officially started Feb. 1 and would last for seven months until Aug. 31. During this period, all overseas Filipinos who would to cast their ballots in the presidential and national elections in 2010 can sign up at Philippine embassies and consulates abroad.
The outcome of the current registration is expected to have better results since Comelec has been through two previous registrations for OAV.
For the initial registration in 2003 (for the May 2004 elections), there were 361,457 registrants compared to 142,665 during the registration in 2006 (for the 2007 polls).
Comelec attributed the reduction in registrants to the fact that the 2007 polls were merely mid-term elections. They said the 2004 polls were presidential elections thus generating much more interest.
Obstacles
The Overseas Absentee Voting Secretariat of the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA-OAVS), formerly the lead agency in the implementation of OAV, said overseas Filipinos usually fail to comply with registration requirements because of distance (from the nearest embassy or consulate), nature of work, and employer's restrictions.
In many cases, the OAVS said overseas Filipinos are geographically dispersed and work or reside in areas far from the designated registration centers – the embassies and consulates. Unfortunately, the DFA-OAVS said there are only 87 facilities (81 Posts, 3 POLOs and 3 MECOs) which serve as voting centers.
For this reason, the embassies have partnered with employers of large numbers of Filipinos to either bus their employees to a registration site or conduct field registrations.
Community involvement in Saudi Arabia
Nevertheless, the numbers have not been good. This is probably why, this time around, one group is not taking any chances.
The Partidong Pangdaigdigang Pilipino (PPP), which aims to get at least one overseas Filipino worker into Congress in 2010, is partnering with the embassy in Riyadh to conduct voter information and education campaigns there. The biggest concentration of OFWs is in Saudi Arabia, which also happens to be the number one destination of OFWs.
Rudy Dianalan, president of the Jeddah chapter of PPP said "we have brainstormed the theme and one of those brought up also involved 3 P's: Pagrehistro, Pagboto, Pagbabago."
He said they plan to revive camp visits, lectures at various work sites since "this helped generate the bulk of Jeddah's 33,000 registrations and 16,000 voters in 2004." In the 2007 elections where the community had not been involved, there were only 3,000 additional registrants and just 6,000 votes cast.
Similar campaigns are reportedly being waged elsewhere and they all reportedly have community involvement.
Different agenda
In Manila, OAV advocates are continuing to push for amendments to the overseas absentee voting bill.
Ellene Sana, Center for Migrant Advocacy executive director, said the amendments in question will scrap the affidavit of intent to return which has been required of Filipino immigrants abroad. This has also proven a deterrent to Filipinos overseas, particularly to green card holders in the US who fear that their residency will be affected by executing this affidavit.
This requirement was included in the law to keep the overseas Filipino "connected" to the Philippines.
Longer registration period
Sana said her group and other civil society groups as well are lobbying for a longer registration period for overseas absentee voters. They are protesting the “drastic” cut from ten to seven months. From the original Dec. 1, 2008 to August 31, 2009, the registration period has been shortened from February 1 to August 31, 2009.
"I do not understand why the period for continuing registration of local voters is one year while that for overseas absentee voting is only seven months," Sana complained.
John Leonard Monterona, Migrante-Middle East regional coordinator of Migrante International, earlier said that shortening the duration of the OAV registration to seven months is unreasonable, unjust and unconstitutional.
Preparations
But Nicodemo Ferrer, Comelec commissioner in charge of OAV said the time span is enough. Preparations for the 2009 registration began as early as April 2008 when consultations were held with non-governmental organizations, the DFA-OAVS and the Commission on Filipinos Overseas (CFO).
Ferrer then proposed a "massive information dissemination campaign" for the 2010 elections. Filipinos overseas will be allowed to vote for the president, vice-president, senators and party-list representative.
His fellow commissioner, Rene Sarmiento, said a lot of the former registrants will be removed from the voters' lists because the ruling is that if an overseas absentee voter fails to cast his ballot for two consecutive elections, he will have to re-enlist. Since the first registration in 2003, many OFWs have transferred residences and/or ended their contracts and have returned to the Philippines.
This year, Comelec said it is expecting at least a million registrants.
Former DFA Undersecretary Rafael Seguis also said they are targeting one million absentee voters to register for the coming elections. In preparation, Comelec officials in Manila even visited consular posts abroad to train foreign affairs personnel on the process of registering overseas Filipinos.
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