Senate panel firming up absentee voting safeguards

The Senate committee on suffrage and electoral reforms is now firming up safeguards to the proposed law allowing up to six million Filipinos overseas to vote in national elections, Sen. Edgardo Angara said yesterday.

Angara, the committee chairman, said there is a need to establish adequate safeguards for this "pioneering exercise" to prevent unscrupulous persons from using the measure for widespread cheating and election fraud.

He said there would be safeguards in the printing of registration forms, ballots and other official documents, in the delivery of registration documents and actual votes to the Commission on Elections (Comelec), in the counting and canvassing of votes, and in maintaining a separate list of absentee voters.

"An earlier proposal to involve the Philippine diplomatic offices and embassies in some sensitive aspects of the exercise has been set aside," he said.

Angara said there is a consensus in the committee to exclusively assign to the Comelec the important aspects of the electoral exercise from registration to canvassing of votes.

"There was also a consensus to allow even green card holders to participate in the exercise," he said. "All qualified Filipinos who have not renounced their citizenship will be allowed to vote."

He gave assurances that the proposed measure would be passed in time to enable Filipinos abroad to vote for president, vice president, senators and party-list representatives in the 2004 elections.

Sen. Blas Ople, chairman of the Senate committee on foreign relations, said Angara’s committee would also be holding consultations with Filipinos overseas before finalizing the bill on absentee voting.

A number of organizations of Filipinos abroad have been lobbying for the enactment of a law that would give flesh to the constitutional mandate on absentee voting.

Ople said the Senate consultations abroad would enable the committee to firm up the proposed law, taking into consideration the recommendations and observations of Filipinos overseas.

He said the Senate media would cover these consultations abroad.

Ople and Angara said it is but right that Filipinos who have been helping the country ride through the crest of various crises, even if they are abroad, should enjoy the right of suffrage.