‘Absentee bill enacted in 2 months’

Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr. assured millions of overseas Filipino workers yesterday that the bill that would give them voting rights in national elections would be enacted in two months.

"We have already reached a multi-partisan consensus in the House and the Senate, and Congress would be ready to approve it when it returns to work (on April 15)," he told a group of Filipinos in Athens.

De Venecia is in Greece to hold dialogues with OFWs and meet with Greek leaders. He has met with his counterpart, Speaker Apostolus Kaklamanis, who praised Filipinos for being "hardworking and law-abiding workers" in his country.

De Venecia said there would be no problem in approving the so-called Absentee Voting Bill as soon as possible since both chambers of Congress and President Arroyo are all for it.

The opposition Laban ng Demokratikong Pilipino led by Sen. Edgardo Angara in the Senate and Minority Leader Carlos Padilla in the House are also for its enactment, he said.

In fact, it is Angara and Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel Jr. and other opposition senators who have led the month-long consultations in Asia, the Middle East, Europe and the United States with OFWs on the measure, he added.

Angara is the principal author of the bill in the Senate. In the House, the chief sponsor and author is Rep. Augusto Syjuco of Iloilo, who chairs the committee on suffrage and electoral reforms.

De Venecia said he and Senate President Franklin Drilon are scheduled to meet with the seven member Commission on Elections

on April 22 in preparation for the implementation of the Absentee Voting Bill in Filipino communities worldwide.

Close to 30,000 Filipinos are based in Greece, half of them in cruise ships and luxury liners plying the Mediterranean Sea.

During the Holy Week, the Speaker and his small delegation that included Makati Rep. Teodoro "Teddyboy" Locsin Jr. were in Italy where they met with Filipino workers there.