OFWs want a say in the elections. Photo grabbed from mackybaka! blog
The country’s biggest organization of overseas Filipino workers today predicted serious problems in the conduct of overseas absentee voting for the May 10, 2010 elections, citing late, questionable and inadequate preparations both by the Commission on Elections and the Department of Foreign Affairs.
In a statement, Migrante International chair Garry Martinez sees “inevitable failure” in the OAV elections on the same day the Comelec and the DFA is set to wrap up its OAV training for diplomatic officials and staff.
OAV starts April 10 via Philippine consular and diplomatic offices abroad.
“Apart from the trainings being unforgivingly late, the OAV is still bound to fail if the Comelec and the RP posts abroad do not clarify the particularities on how are they going to ensure that OFWs will be able to vote and how the system will be free from fraud. Until now the Comelec has not released clear-cut guidelines to address these problems, until now there are no schedules of voters education for OFWs,” said Martinez.
Martinez said that, for one, the number of precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines alloted for Hong Kong and Singapore were not enough.
The Comelec and the DFA have announced that 30 PCOS machines would be used to serve 127,206 overseas absentee voters in in Hong Kong and Singapore.
The number of PCOS machines to be deployed in the two areas was based on ideal assumptions that there would be no machine failure and very well-informed voters, said Martinez.
“Disenfranchisement is sure to happen,” he said, citing the problems marring the dry-runs and mock polls held early this month in select areas in the Philippines.
The OFW leader also criticized the use of postal voting in other areas, saying that the last time it was used, many ballots arrived at overseas polling centers after the election period.
More importantly, Martinez said there is the absence of ways and means to protect the machines and the ballots from tampering and from fraud. He
“With the way things are going, we really suspect that this isn’t just a case of late preparations. This could be intended to really sabotage the votes of the migrant Filipinos,” said Martinez.