Asia Times: Voting remains a dream for overseas Filipinos


	September 13, 2001	atimes.com

Southeast Asia

Voting remains a dream for overseas Filipinos
By Marites N Sison

MANILA - For millions of Filipinos working overseas, absentee voting has become a dream as elusive as finally coming home after years of toiling in a foreign land.

The Philippine Congress has yet to pass a bill that would allow more than seven million overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) and 2.5 million Filipino migrants to vote in national and local elections, even though such rights are guaranteed under the constitution.

Last month, OFWs and Filipino migrants from the Middle East, the European Union, North America and Asia gathered in Manila to lobby for the passage of an absentee voting bill that would grant the right of suffrage to all Filipinos of age residing abroad. They even met with Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who assured them that she has certified as urgent all bills related to absentee voting.

There are two pending absentee voting bills in Congress, Senate Bill 1746 and House Bill 10720. Activists call them "reincarnations" of old bills that congresses since 1986 have relegated to the backburner. Action on the bills has been stymied, especially by resistance from politicians, who have expressed fears of vote-rigging and the "swing vote effect" favoring candidates preferred by Filipinos overseas. Continuing political instability in the Philippines has stalled even a discussion on the bill by the plenary.

Last year, House Bill 10720 was supposed to have been presented for a second reading by Akbayan party-list representative Etta Rosales, who held a two-week consultation with OFWs in the European Union in 1999. It was, however, sidelined by the impeachment proceedings against then-president Joseph Estrada.

Migrant workers had hoped the passage of the bill would make them eligible to vote in the national elections last May 14. Their hopes for its passage late this year have been dashed by the attention given to a scandal involving a former police general turned senator accused of involvement in drug smuggling and kidnapping.

Senate hearings have focused on the scandal, as well as the approval of the much-delayed national budget, again putting the absentee voting bill aside. "Our role as economic saviors or, according to the government, as 'modern-day heroes' should be enough reason to entitle us to political rights as basic as suffrage," says the group Global Coalition for the Political Empowerment of Overseas Filipinos (EMPOWER), in a position paper it presented to both houses of congress. "We want to be recognized and treated as full-fledged Filipino citizens, not as an apolitical constituency easily made giddy by patronizing labels."

OFWs remit around US$7 billion to the country annually, and have helped create a growing middle class. Remittances have steadily helped buoy the economy at a time when incomes from other export industries have slid. The Philippines is the second largest labor exporting country in the world, and its 7 million overseas workers comprise 20 percent of the labor force. Some 840,000 people go abroad each year to work, most of them to Asian destinations and to the Middle East.

To ensure that this time around their voices will be heard, EMPOWER, along with other groups like E-Lagda (E-Signature), the group which called for the ouster of Estrada by gathering signatures via the Internet, and Kakammpi, an organization composed of relatives of OFWs, have agreed to intensify their lobbying efforts to ensure that they will be able to vote in the 2004 presidential elections.

The campaign has the support of the influential Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, which recently conducted a survey that established that a majority of OFWs favor absentee voting. The survey, which CBCP conducted along with the Philippine Migrants Rights Watch, showed that 66 percent of the respondents believe OFWs should be allowed to vote. The survey was conducted among OFWs in Taiwan, Japan, Italy, Denmark and Hong Kong.

Absentee voting activists are campaigning that such rights be extended to all OFWs regardless of their status - whether documented or undocumented, sea-based or land-based - and with mere possession of a valid Philippine passport as the only criteria. They also want voting rights to be extended in national as well as local elections, referenda and plebiscite.

There are a number of sticky issues, though, that need to be settled, among them how absentee voting can be implemented in areas where there are no Philippine diplomatic posts. Overseas Filipinos are spread out in more than 181 countries, but the Philippines has established missions and consulates only in 81 destinations. Other issues include the voting and canvassing of ballots, including how and where the ballots will be counted to ensure their sanctity.

But these, according to E-Lagda official Alfredo Ganapin, who is based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, should not be a damper to the idea of giving OFWs what is due them. "We have as much stake as any Filipino has over the future of our country," he stressed. He said that advances in information technology have made absentee voting both practical and viable.

Former Senator Raul Roco has suggested that Filipinos abroad could vote through the Internet. The pending bills suggest voting by mail or by personal appearance in the diplomatic or consular offices, which will serve as voting precincts. To date at least 40 countries, including Japan, Thailand, Indonesia, the United States and Canada, allow overseas voting.

Rosales, for her part, underscored the importance of extending a political right to OFWs "who constitute 10 percent of our population and almost 20 percent of our productive age population".

(Inter Press Service)