Migrante sets up hotline for migrant Filipino voters

A militant group has set up a hotline for migrant Filipinos who may be disenfranchised during the overseas absentee voting period from April 10 to May 10. Migrante International said the anti-fraud and anti-disenfranchisement hotline is meant to safeguard migrant workers’ votes. "We doubt that the automated election system will completely eliminate fraud, that is why we are urging our compatriots in the world to be observant and vigilant on any irregularities and attempts to cheat their votes; and immediately report it to us, using their mobile phones via cell phone number +63922-6824187," Migrante International Chairman Garry Martinez said in an article on the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines news site. The hotline, dubbed "Migrante Watch" will be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week until the absentee voting finishes on May 9, he said. Migrante claims to have at least 80 allied organizations in the Asia-Pacific, Mid-East, Europe and North America. According to Martinez, they were keeping an eye on the voting in Hong Kong and Singapore, which serve as the laboratory for the Commission on Elections’ automated election system abroad. "Hong Kong and Singapore will be our testing ground [to find out if] Comelec is indeed capable of holding orderly and credible automated polls, despite the already grave lapses in the preparations in the conduct of the polls," he said. He cited a reassignment of precincts in Hong Kong last April 6, which supposedly had confused voters there. Filipinos in the former British colonies have also been complaining about the lack of voters’ education, as well as inadequate number of Precinct Optical Scan Machines deployed by the poll body. "We therefore urge our fellow [migrant Filipinos] to go out and cast their ballots starting April 10. However, we must be careful on whom we vote so that we can be truly sure that only those candidates and party-lists that are truly advancing our interests as migrant workers and our families’ interests get elected," Martinez said. — GMANews.TV