• Home

Filipino expats can't vote by mail

DUBAI — Filipinos residing in the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Hong Kong, who have registered for the overseas absentee voting (OAV), will continue to follow the traditional personal voting system when the Philippines goes to national elections this April.

However, Filipinos residing in other countries will follow the newly-introduced voting-by-mail system, an official of the Philippine's Commission on Elections (Comelec) announced yesterday.

Estrella De Mesa, Deputy Executive Director for Administration of Comelec in Manila, said the commission had decided to implement the conventional system of casting ballots in the two countries and Hong Kong because of the expected turnout of voters. "During the last Philippine national elections in 2004, we witnessed an impressive turnout in these countries," she said.

Another factor, said Comelec, was that the postal set-up in countries like the UAE and Saudi Arabia may not be suitable for the new procedure. "We have received feedback from Filipinos in Saudi Arabia that their postal addresses are only routed through a postal office (P.O.) box number, which sometimes makes it difficult for them to receive mails personally," she added.

Kabaitan Guinhawa Valmonte, also from the Comelec, said there were only 504,110 registered overseas Filipino voters worldwide, a far cry from the estimated 1.33 million overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) mentioned in a survey conducted by the Philippine's National Statistics Office in 2005.

In the same survey, Saudi Arabia ranked as the top destination for OFWs in terms of numbers, followed by Japan, Hong Kong, and the UAE.

Across the Emirates where an estimated 200,000 Filipinos are residing, the total number of registered voters has been a low 19,165, including those who registered in 2004.

De Mesa has attributed the poor participation of Filipinos in the electoral process to their lack of trust in the Philippine government.

She noted that the right to suffrage is a freedom of choice. "We just have to keep reminding them about the importance of participating in the electoral process," De Mesa emphasised.

The Comelec official is in Dubai to conduct a three-day seminar of OAV volunteers from the UAE, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, and New Delhi (India).