Comelec conducts voters' trainings in UAE, Saudi

The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) and Commission on Elections (Comelec) recently conducted training sessions in the Middle East for electoral boards for the May 10 elections. The DFA said its Overseas Absentee Voting Secretariat (OAVS) and the Comelec's Committee on Overseas Absentee Voting (COAV) conducted training sessions on Personal Voting simultaneously in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates and in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. An article on the DFA Web site said the trainings began on March 18 and ended on March 20. It said the training in Abu Dhabi will be for foreign service posts in the Middle East and Africa which will adopt Personal Voting. It had 34 participants representing Philippine Embassies in Abu Dhabi Amman, Beirut, Cairo, Damascus, Doha, Kuwait, Manana, Muscat, Nairobi and Tehran; and Consulate-General in Dubai. The training in Riyadh will be for Saudi Arabia which will also adopt Personal Voting. Participating in it were personnel representing the Philippine Embassy in Riyadh, the Philippine Consulate-General in Jeddah and the Philippine Overseas Labor Office in Al-Khobar, Eastern Saudi Arabia. DFA Undersecretary and OAVS head Rafael Seguis said a decision to hold a separate training for Saudi Arabia alone was reached due to its size as an OAV voting center and the big number of electoral boards. For the May 2010 elections, a total of 225,148 overseas absentee voters will cast their votes in person. - KBK, GMANews.TV