DFA, Comelec get set for April 10 start of absentee voting

The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) and the Commission on Elections (Comelec) have started finalizing preparations for some 589,830 overseas Filipino workers to cast their votes in this year's automated elections, as absentee voting starts April 10. In line with this, personnel from the DFA Overseas Absentee Voting Secretariat (OAVS) and the Comelec Committee on Overseas Absentee Voting will hold a training at Heritage Hotel in Pasay City from Feb. 24 to 26, according to a release posted on the DFA Website. DFA-OAVS Chairman and DFA Undersecretary Rafael Seguis said the training is the first and the biggest to be conducted before the start of the OAV component of the May elections. Expected to attend are over 100 representatives from the foreign service, especially in the Asia-Pacific region, which have recommended the adoption of personal voting. Also attending are Philippine ambassadors-designate to six countries who will be assuming their posts soon, and two incoming heads of consular posts in the United States. "They will serve as members of the Electoral Boards in the Foreign Service Posts they represent. These boards are the Special Ballot Reception and Custody Group (SBRCG), the Special Board of Election Inspectors (SBEl), and the Special Board of Canvassers (SBOC)," the DFA said. Training in Americas, Europe Aside from the training, Comelec representatives supported by DFA-OAVS personnel will travel to Los Angeles and Madrid on March 11-13 to conduct training on Postal Voting for Electoral Boards of Posts in the Americas and Europe, respectively. They will go to Abu Dhabi and Riyadh on March 18-20 to conduct training on Personal Voting for Electoral Boards of Posts in the Middle East and Africa and in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), respectively. "The trainings in these four countries will be attended by over 200 foreign service personnel, more than half of whom will be coming from Saudi Arabia (Riyadh, Jeddah and AI-Khobar)," the DFA said. A separate training for the automated election system in Hong Kong and Singapore will take place in the first week of April 2010. An expert from Smartmatic-TIM is currently on a visit to Hong Kong and Singapore to coordinate with the information technology focal points of the two posts, also in preparation for the May elections. Meanwhile, Comelec-COAV and OAVS personnel will undertake a consultation mission to Hong Kong and Singapore from February 27 to March 5 to ensure that the automated elections in said posts will not encounter problems. No info drive yet in HK, Singapore On Monday, members of a migrants’ rights group trooped to the Comelec to raise their concerns on the conduct of OAV, particularly in Hong Kong and Singapore, saying overseas voters have yet to be informed of the conduct of the elections less than two months before the scheduled start. “The COMELEC’s nonchalance scares us. Filipinos in Hong Kong and Singapore will start voting in seven weeks, but the COMELEC hasn’t come up with the guidelines on the automated balloting. All it has issued so far are scant information through press releases and media interviews," Migrante International chair Garry Martinez said in a press conference outside the poll body’s office. Martinez said the issuance of the guidelines on OAV is necessary as the process is completely different from the local voting and counting. Filipinos in Hong Kong and Singapore will be voting for a month until May 10 and each Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machine will be configured to accommodate 5,000 voters each. Local elections will only be conducted on May 11, and PCOS machines can only handle up to 1,000 voters each. “What will be the Comelec’s contingency plan in case the machines break down in the one-month balloting? The Comelec says transmission of results will only happen at the close of the polls on May 10. Do they have safeguards in place to protect all the votes stored in the machine for an entire month?" Martinez asked. He also expressed concern on the PCOS machines’ durability, saying these will have to be working for ten hours every day for an entire month for the OAV. No mock elections and field tests were done in Hong Kong and Singapore, he added. The group thus fears an imminent failure of elections for the OAV, which Martinez said will result in disenfranchisement of 95,355 Filipino voters in Hong Kong and 31,851 in Singapore. —Jerrie M. Abella/JV, GMANews.TV