1M Pinoys abroad seen registering for 2010 polls

With less than three months until the final registration day for the elections set for May next year, the Commission in Elections (Comelec) and the Commission on Filipinos Overseas (CFO) are confident of being able to reach the poll body’s pegged target of one million overseas absentee voters (OAV) registrants.

The OAV registration started last Feb. 1 and was scheduled to run until Aug. 31, or less than two months from today.

CFO Chairman Dante Ang said a registration center will be installed at the CFO office in Manila to accommodate thousands of returning and departing overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) and Filipinos who have become permanent residents in other countries and citizens of foreign states.

“As of this day, there are roughly 500,000 registrants, meaning those who have returned to the Philippines were already taken note. So I must say with 500,000 registrants, that is more than enough success,” he said.

The CFO registration center will target specifically those Filipino permanent migrants or permanent residents abroad, Filipinos overseas who have become citizens of other countries, and Filipino spouses and fiancées of foreigners leaving the country.

“Here at the Commission on Filipinos Overseas, those who mostly come here are those permanent residents abroad, the immigrants, and also the dual citizens. Hopefully, we can get a lot of registrants here,” Commissioner and Chairman Nicodemo Ferrer, of the Comelec’s committee on overseas absentee voting (COAV), said.

According to Ferrer, the reported decrease in the number of absentee voters are due to deaths, the voters’ failure to vote in the past two successive elections, and the expiration of their work contracts and application of transfer to vote in the Philippines.

“We are aware of the low turn-out of OAV registrants; this is why we are giving our OFWs the chance to register as absentee voters even before they leave for work abroad,” he said.

The Comelec will also give attention to Filipinos in Saudi Arabia, where more than one million OFWs are either employed or are residents. This was proposed by Ang and confirmed by Department of Foreign Affairs-Overseas Absentee Voting Secretariat (DFA-OAVS) Vice Chairman Nestor Padalhin, a former ambassador of the country to Saudi Arabia.

“There are more than 1.3 million (Filipinos) there (Saudi). If we can get those, let’s say 50 percent (of that number), we shall have achieved 1 million voters,” Ferrer said.

The memorandum of agreement (MoA) for the installation of a registration center at the office of the CFO was signed yesterday by representatives from the DFA-OAVS, the CFO and the Comelec-COAV, which is part of the government’s campaign to encourage the broadest number of Filipinos abroad to register for the elections next year.

The CFO registration center is the third center opened since the start of the registration this year. The first two were opened last Feb. 1 at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport and Philippine Overseas Employment Agency office. As of last Wednesday, 20,583 have already registered at the two registration centers.

Under the signed MoA, the Comelec will initially assign two data capturing machines and DCM operators who will take the biometrics of the registrant; the CFO will provide the space and the use of their facilities, promote and assist the immigrants or permanent residents to register in the OAV; and the DFA will assign at least two representatives and assign two computers for the verification of the registrant.

In 2003, Congress passed Republic Act 9189, or the Overseas Absentee Voting Act, a law which provides a system of overseas voting by qualified citizens abroad to be implemented by the Comelec in coordination with the DFA.

The Comelec has also drafted a MoA with the Overseas Workers Welfare Administrations (OWWA) and the Manila Economic and Cultural Office (MECO) in Taiwan, which signing is still pending.

As of June 3, 92,175 Filipinos registered as absentee voters worldwide with Asia and the Pacific drawing the largest number of OAV registrants, with 25,025; the Americas, with 19,345; the Middle East and Africa, with 15,524; and Europe, with 11,698.

The top five countries in OAV registration are the US, with 15,559; China, with 9,365; the UAE, with 5,909; Saudi Arabia, with 4,280; and Singapore, with 4,091.

Ferrer said with the its automation, registration has been made easier and faster.

He said to be able to obtain the 1 million OAV registrants target, the Comelec aims to encourage Filipinos in the Middle East to register by increasing the satellite registration centers there.

In the last national elections in 2007, there were a total of 504,110 OAVs who registered for the polls. –Danessa Rivera and Marie A. Surbano, Daily Tribune