Absentee Voting Advocates
To Lobby Vs. Poll Scrapping
By JULIE JAVELLANA-SANTOS
To Lobby Vs. Poll Scrapping
By JULIE JAVELLANA-SANTOS
THEY lobbied hard for a law to allow Filipinos overseas to vote; some are drumming up the need to register before the registration deadline in August this year.
But with constitutionalists' move to cancel the 2007 elections, absentee voting advocates fell betrayed.
"What a sad Christmas message it was for [overseas Filipino workers]," absentee voting campaigner Ofelia Mananquil-Bakker said in her email message.
Mananquil-Bakker, head of the International Coalition for Overseas Filipino Voting Rights (ICO-FVR), explained her sentiments were based on the peso's appreciation against the US dollar because of OFW remittances "and here we are scrambling with our efforts, urging all OFWs to register".
"And this happens," she added.
Mananquil-Bakker referred to a proposal by the 55-member Constitutional Commission to cancel the 2007 local government elections.
The commission, chaired by former UP president Jose Abueva, said doing so would allow senators and congressmen whose terms are expiring in 2007 to make up an interim parliament in view of the country's shift from the presidential system.
The commission also proposed that President Gloria Arroyo becomes head of both the state and the government, with supervision over an interim prime minister who will assume power in 2010, the end of Arroyo's term.
It was in 2004 elections that the Absentee Voting Law was first implemented but with a low turn-out of 380,000 registered voters from overseas.
Commission on Elections Commissioner Florentino Tuason Jr. told the Consortium that the low registration turnout of Filipinos overseas could be attributed to birth pains and passed off as inconsequential.
Some of them grouped under Global Filipinos, cited that the proposal to scrap the 2007 polls "will frustrate the continued desire of Filipino expatriates to exercise their suffrage rights in a meaningful way."
Absentee voting campaigner and founding chair Vic Barrios said in a statement Abueva's group's proposal will block the ability of these expatriates, "representing more than 10 percent of all Filipinos and marginalized for a long time from the country's mainstream political life, to pursue their aspirations of entering the mainstream of Philippine political life."
Awakenings
GLOBAL Filipinos forwarded the analysis that a no-election scenario in 2007 will "substantially weaken the country's democratic framework, as it deepens the hold of political dynasties and incumbents on the political system, including those who have irreparably lost the public trust".
The absence of a contest among politicians via elections would lead "to the loss of political competition, lack of accountability, substandard delivery of social services and perpetuation of poverty incidence."
New Jersey-based (USA) Filipino businessman Robert Ceralvo, who started running an export-import company out of Cebu, said "in this very divisive times where more people wanted to cut short the tenure of most elected public officials, if not all, recommending to cancel the scheduled 2007 elections should have been the last thing in the minds of the members of the Consultative Commission."
Indeed, lawmakers see the proposal as farthest from their minds.
In a television interview on December 23, House Majority Floor Leader Prospero Nograles said the proposal hasn't been calendared yet and would be the last priority once the Lower House of Representatives re-convenes in January. Nograles said the top priority bills pending in Congress are the national budget for 2006, anti-terrorism bill, the hidden wealth of former President Ferdinand Marcos, and a wage increase.
"The move is dead, deader, deadest," Senator Joker Arroyo said.
The senator added that "it is bad enough that the draft Constitution by the ConCom is unoriginal. What makes it worse is that it is a copycat, a plagiarism of Marcos's 1973 Constitution."
Sen. Arroyo recalled how the 1973 Constitution stated that lawmakers who affixed their signatures to it would automatically become members of the interim Batasang Pambansa. He said the Charter also provided that Marcos would be president and prime minister until a new president was elected.
"With such Marcosian stamps and footprints, how can anyone support the ConCom proposals?" Sen. Arroyo asked.
Warning signs
IN a letter to Abueva, Leila Rispens-Noel of the Dutch funding agency Novib warned "if we will not send the US$12 million remittances, the government has nothing to boast of, that the economy is 'poised to take off'".
Rispens-Noel referred to the amount of money that Filipinos in The Netherlands send annually to the Philippines.
Rispens-Noel reportedly told Abueva that she prayed "God and the Filipino people will forgive you and the members of the Consultative Commission for the consequences of your action."
"You followed your own voice and agenda and not the voice and the sentiments of the people."
Mananquil-Bakker who, like Rispens-Noel, is based in The Netherlands, called on members of the e-group to "voice out loudly our disapproval to the scrapping of the 2007 elections."
"Given the resignation of those …Comelec people and the OFW quest to computerize the election process, they know that with the OFW vote they will be out of their lofty powerful positions in no time," she added.
Mananquil-Bakker also said that the advocacy for more registration among OFWs has increased.
The 2007 election is what we all have been waiting for". "We have to do something to stop them from scrapping what we have been waiting for," Mananquil-Bakker said.
Her voice was echoed by San Francisco-based writer Cesar Torres who said that "all 'sacrifices' [we made] to register the Filipinos in Northern California to vote would be for naught."
Finally, Barrios has asked for representation of Filipino expatriates in the Constitutional Commission.
“During its deliberations, the Constitutional Commission never consult the Filipino expatriate community, their onshore dependents and members of their families," he lamented. OFW Journalism Consortium, Inc.
But with constitutionalists' move to cancel the 2007 elections, absentee voting advocates fell betrayed.
"What a sad Christmas message it was for [overseas Filipino workers]," absentee voting campaigner Ofelia Mananquil-Bakker said in her email message.
Mananquil-Bakker, head of the International Coalition for Overseas Filipino Voting Rights (ICO-FVR), explained her sentiments were based on the peso's appreciation against the US dollar because of OFW remittances "and here we are scrambling with our efforts, urging all OFWs to register".
"And this happens," she added.
Mananquil-Bakker referred to a proposal by the 55-member Constitutional Commission to cancel the 2007 local government elections.
The commission, chaired by former UP president Jose Abueva, said doing so would allow senators and congressmen whose terms are expiring in 2007 to make up an interim parliament in view of the country's shift from the presidential system.
The commission also proposed that President Gloria Arroyo becomes head of both the state and the government, with supervision over an interim prime minister who will assume power in 2010, the end of Arroyo's term.
It was in 2004 elections that the Absentee Voting Law was first implemented but with a low turn-out of 380,000 registered voters from overseas.
Commission on Elections Commissioner Florentino Tuason Jr. told the Consortium that the low registration turnout of Filipinos overseas could be attributed to birth pains and passed off as inconsequential.
Some of them grouped under Global Filipinos, cited that the proposal to scrap the 2007 polls "will frustrate the continued desire of Filipino expatriates to exercise their suffrage rights in a meaningful way."
Absentee voting campaigner and founding chair Vic Barrios said in a statement Abueva's group's proposal will block the ability of these expatriates, "representing more than 10 percent of all Filipinos and marginalized for a long time from the country's mainstream political life, to pursue their aspirations of entering the mainstream of Philippine political life."
Awakenings
GLOBAL Filipinos forwarded the analysis that a no-election scenario in 2007 will "substantially weaken the country's democratic framework, as it deepens the hold of political dynasties and incumbents on the political system, including those who have irreparably lost the public trust".
The absence of a contest among politicians via elections would lead "to the loss of political competition, lack of accountability, substandard delivery of social services and perpetuation of poverty incidence."
New Jersey-based (USA) Filipino businessman Robert Ceralvo, who started running an export-import company out of Cebu, said "in this very divisive times where more people wanted to cut short the tenure of most elected public officials, if not all, recommending to cancel the scheduled 2007 elections should have been the last thing in the minds of the members of the Consultative Commission."
Indeed, lawmakers see the proposal as farthest from their minds.
In a television interview on December 23, House Majority Floor Leader Prospero Nograles said the proposal hasn't been calendared yet and would be the last priority once the Lower House of Representatives re-convenes in January. Nograles said the top priority bills pending in Congress are the national budget for 2006, anti-terrorism bill, the hidden wealth of former President Ferdinand Marcos, and a wage increase.
"The move is dead, deader, deadest," Senator Joker Arroyo said.
The senator added that "it is bad enough that the draft Constitution by the ConCom is unoriginal. What makes it worse is that it is a copycat, a plagiarism of Marcos's 1973 Constitution."
Sen. Arroyo recalled how the 1973 Constitution stated that lawmakers who affixed their signatures to it would automatically become members of the interim Batasang Pambansa. He said the Charter also provided that Marcos would be president and prime minister until a new president was elected.
"With such Marcosian stamps and footprints, how can anyone support the ConCom proposals?" Sen. Arroyo asked.
Warning signs
IN a letter to Abueva, Leila Rispens-Noel of the Dutch funding agency Novib warned "if we will not send the US$12 million remittances, the government has nothing to boast of, that the economy is 'poised to take off'".
Rispens-Noel referred to the amount of money that Filipinos in The Netherlands send annually to the Philippines.
Rispens-Noel reportedly told Abueva that she prayed "God and the Filipino people will forgive you and the members of the Consultative Commission for the consequences of your action."
"You followed your own voice and agenda and not the voice and the sentiments of the people."
Mananquil-Bakker who, like Rispens-Noel, is based in The Netherlands, called on members of the e-group to "voice out loudly our disapproval to the scrapping of the 2007 elections."
"Given the resignation of those …Comelec people and the OFW quest to computerize the election process, they know that with the OFW vote they will be out of their lofty powerful positions in no time," she added.
Mananquil-Bakker also said that the advocacy for more registration among OFWs has increased.
The 2007 election is what we all have been waiting for". "We have to do something to stop them from scrapping what we have been waiting for," Mananquil-Bakker said.
Her voice was echoed by San Francisco-based writer Cesar Torres who said that "all 'sacrifices' [we made] to register the Filipinos in Northern California to vote would be for naught."
Finally, Barrios has asked for representation of Filipino expatriates in the Constitutional Commission.
“During its deliberations, the Constitutional Commission never consult the Filipino expatriate community, their onshore dependents and members of their families," he lamented. OFW Journalism Consortium, Inc.
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