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Philippines: Enfranchising a nation
abroad
By Marco Garrido
MANILA - Article 25 of the United Nations
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights enshrines
suffrage as a basic and inalienable right. For good
reason: an enfranchised citizenry is the foundation of
democracy. Article 25 would seem to pre-suppose,
however, that a country's citizens also happen to be its
residents. A fair presumption, to be sure, but one that
time has somewhat complicated.
The Philippines
is a nation that, to a relatively great extent, lives
outside its territorial borders. A full 20 percent of
the Philippine electorate resides overseas. Of 7.38
million overseas Filipinos (nearly a tenth of the entire
Philippine population), 2.99 million are classified as
Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs), 2.55 million are
permanent residents in various countries, and the
remaining 1.84 million have irregular status. Overseas
Filipinos have scattered to the ends of the Earth in
search for work and a better life. The money they send
home - about US$7 billion annually - has established
their continuing ties with their motherland; and these
remittances establish their economic indispensability.
While overseas Filipinos have long had the right to
vote, as mandated in the 1987 constitution, only
recently has a mechanism been put in place that would
enable them to do so.
Expanding the
electorate transnationally
Two bills - one
passed, one pending - have been designed to expand the
Philippine electorate in a way that better reflects its
transnational reality.
Passed this year, the
Absentee Voting Law allows Filipino citizens living
overseas to cast their ballots in national-level
elections (for president, vice president, senators,
party-list representatives, referenda, and plebiscites).
Before they can mail their ballots to Manila, they must
first register to vote, apply for absentee voting
certification, and, if they happen to be permanent
residents, sign affidavits pledging to return to the
Philippines within three years. Absentee votes will be
counted only if they are deemed significant; that is, if
they will affect the outcome of the election.
The Dual Citizenship Bill goes one step farther.
It allows naturalized citizens of other countries to
retrieve their Philippine citizenships and hence become
eligible to vote - despite having otherwise renounced
it. The law states that oaths of allegiance sworn to
other countries for purposes of naturalization "shall
not be interpreted as a free, willful, and voluntary act
of renunciation and therefore will not be a bar to the
retention of Philippine citizenship".
As dual
citizens, Filipino-Americans, say, would be able to
travel to the Philippines without a visa, own property
and businesses here, and, of course, vote in local
elections. Unlike the Absentee Voting Law, however,
enrichment rather than enfranchisement would seem to be
the predominant motivation behind the bill. "Filipinos
abroad constitute a mighty economic force," said House
Speaker Jose de Venecia, one of the bill's principal
sponsors. "Their investments here could trigger a
housing and real-estate boom."
The Philippine
Senate and Congress have approved their respective
versions of the Dual Citizenship Bill. It now awaits
review by a bicameral committee.
The
Philippines is in the heart
With both bills, the
issue of inclusiveness has hit upon questions of its
sensible limit. Should the guiding principle be, as de
Venecia has argued in reference to the Dual Citizenship
Bill, "once a Filipino, always a Filipino", or is there
a point when a Filipino naturally sheds his right to
citizenship and political participation? There must be,
otherwise Philippine nationality would be meaningless
and citizenship reduced to mere ethnic (instead of
political) designation. A reasonable point of exclusion
would seem to be when the Philippine state no longer
commands a Filipino's allegiance. But it is not so easy
to determine allegiance. Hence, both bills have been
challenged constitutionally on precisely the question of
whether allegiance follows citizenship.
Lawyer
Romulo Makalintal has argued that the Absentee Voting
Law should not enfranchise work-permit holders or those
with permanent residency status in other countries. This
status reveals an intention to remain in that country
and thus belies a Filipino's eligibility to vote. In
particular, enfranchised permanent residents flout the
constitution's requirement that voters reside in the
country for at least one year prior to elections.
Senator Joker Arroyo has sided with Makalintal,
insisting that "the promise to live permanently
underscores the fact that the voter is not an actual
resident of the Philippines and is, therefore,
ineligible to vote". To obviate this requirement, the
Absentee Voting Law allows for an accomplished affidavit
promising return to the Philippines within three years
to substitute for residency. If, however, overseas
voters do not return within three years, they will be
permanently disfranchised - but the votes they cast will
remain (so, conceivably, if a senatorial candidate wins
by 10,000 votes, and, after three years, 11,000 votes
are found false - because the voters did not return as
promised - the senator cannot be unseated).
The
Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of the
law by distinguishing between domicile and residence.
While overseas Filipinos may reside in other countries,
by executing affidavits pledging return they express
their allegiance to the Philippines, their domicile of
origin. "The affidavit is not only proof of the
intention of immigrants or permanent residents to go
back and resume residency in the Philippines, but more
significantly, it serves as an explicit expression that
he has not in fact abandoned his domicile of origin."
It would seem, then, that allegiance is measured
by determining intention: in this case, an affidavit of
return serves as a greater proof of intention than a
green card. It is taken as evidence that the Philippines
remains in the hearts of overseas Filipinos - who,
accordingly, are given the vote.
The Dual
Citizenship Bill has aroused even fiercer opposition,
largely because its constitutionality is harder to
establish. The constitution expressly states that dual
allegiance "is inimical to national interest". Vice
President Teofisto Guingona argues as much, that "when a
Filipino becomes naturalized in another country, he
becomes a member of that new country of his choice. He
now owes allegiance to the same and no longer has
obligations of fidelity to the Philippines. The
situation is clear." Constitutional framer Joaquin
Bernas, SJ, points out that the oaths of allegiance to
which naturalized citizens must swear are usually
explicit in their renunciation of former allegiances.
Naturalized US citizens, for example, must swear to
"both absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all
allegiance and fidelity to every foreign prince,
potentate, state, or sovereignty whatever".
Naturally, this oath can prove to be extremely
difficult to square with an affirmation of allegiance to
the Philippines, as citizenship would require - unless,
of course, one or the other oaths is taken lightly. This
is what opponents of the bill fear; that dual citizens
will use their new privileges mostly for personal gain
while being free of the obligations that come with
political inclusion. Dual citizens residing in a foreign
country would not have to pay Philippine taxes and could
not be conscripted in case of war. However, they would
be able to conduct business as freely as Philippine
citizens, which, of course, they would be.
For
proponents of the bill, this is largely the point.
Extending citizenship to those Filipinos who have lost
it will, they argue, entice their return and, even
better, their business. De Venecia expects the bill to
bring in up to $10 billion in investments from Filipinos
abroad - the assumption being, of course, that Filipinos
who have succeeded in being naturalized must also have
succeeded in enriching themselves as they only could in
a foreign country. This is not entirely unfounded. While
30 percent of all overseas Filipinos live in Canada and
the United States (which have the largest populations of
naturalized Filipinos), they contribute 70-80 percent of
total annual dollar remittances. Moreover, the magnitude
of their contribution has made many Fil-Ams and
Fil-Canadians feel entitled to have their say in how the
Philippines is run. They contend that the allegiance
they have displayed to the Philippines economically
should be affirmed formally, through their being granted
citizenship. Their pressure has hastened the bill's
preliminary passage in the House and Senate.
Overseas ballots as means of political
reform
One of the more interesting arguments in
favor of the overseas voting laws has been that
extending the vote to Filipinos internationally will
improve its general quality. For one, the argument goes,
overseas Filipinos are insulated from the propaganda and
politicking that mars the local scene. Overseas voters
"cannot be bought, intimidated, or hoodwinked by
unscrupulous politicians", said Senate President
Franklin Drilon. Second, overseas votes are considered
more "intelligent" because, according to Senator Eduardo
Angara, overseas Filipinos are generally more educated,
affluent, and "enlightened" - in the sense of having
traveled and been influenced by the cultures of more
developed nations - than their local counterparts.
This argument has been used with greater cogence
in support of the Dual Citizenship Bill than with the
Absentee Voting Law. While the patent rationale behind
both laws may be to enfranchise overseas Filipinos, each
law has been designed with specific, and wholly
separate, constituencies in mind. Moreover, the votes of
Filipinos naturalized in other countries - the
constituency of the Dual Citizenship Bill - are more
highly regarded than those of Overseas Filipino Workers,
the constituency of the Absentee Voting Law.
There is a class distinction at work here. Being
a Fil-Am or Fil-Canadian represents a higher degree of
social and economic achievement than being a mere OFW.
Congressman Teodoro Locsin astutely commented that OFW
"is a name no Fil-Am will allow herself to be called"
(although, of course, many Fil-Ams and Fil-Canadians
were themselves OFWs before having become citizens).
Indeed, one of the major authors of the Dual Citizenship
Bill dismissed OFWs as "no different from the riffraff
back home". The Fil-Am vote, on the other hand, as
Locsin wryly remarked, is regarded "as though [it were]
a kind of yeast that would raise the quality of
Philippine votes overall". Perhaps the Fil-Am, by virtue
of having been accepted as a citizen of a more developed
nation, and despite being thousands of kilometers
removed from the consequences of his vote, becomes,
therefore, a more qualified citizen of the Philippines
than his unhyphenated compatriots?
The proof
is in the voting?
All this hullabaloo may be for
naught if overseas Filipinos don't care to exercise
their newly acquired right to vote. In the first week of
absentee voting registration (August 1-7), a scant
11,000 Filipinos showed up to register in one of the 84
Philippine consular posts around the world. A good
number of these were embassy staff. If registration
continues at this sluggish pace, the law will certainly
fail to meet even the most modest expectations.
One main problem is the affidavit of return. For
many, the affidavit represents a commitment they are not
willing to make, even if they do intend to return to the
Philippines within three years. Declaring this intention
in writing seems unnecessarily binding. For those whose
stay is undocumented, remaining undocumented is probably
a greater priority than voting. Some simply don't
understand, or are suspicious of, the necessity of
executing an affidavit.
Although voting under
the Absentee Voting Law may seem more trouble than it is
worth, the breakdown of the first week's registration
numbers suggest that this is true only for Filipinos
based in the United States and Canada. While 200-300
Filipinos registered in the US and 63 in Canada, more
than 6,000 registered in Hong Kong. That accounts for 80
percent of all total registrants. Other Asian countries
such as Singapore, Thailand, and Japan also posted high
numbers, and places such as the Middle East and Europe
posted modest numbers (867 and 844 respectively). Are
these numbers the best indicator of true intentions?
Filipinos go to the US and Canada as hopeful immigrants
and do not intend to return to the Philippines until
they are naturalized; however, they go to Hong Kong and
Saudi Arabia to work and have every intention of
returning. This reality only clarifies questions of
allegiance.
International law provides that
every sovereign state can determine who its citizens
are, and so the Philippines can count even those
Filipinos who have left and taken up residence and
citizenship in foreign lands as its citizens. But can it
count on their allegiance?
(Copyright 2003 Asia
Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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