Over 4,000 Pinoys cast votes on first day of OAV

More than 4,000 overseas Filipinos have already cast their votes for this year’s national elections as of Sunday morning, according to the government. In a statement posted on its Web site, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said 4,141 Filipinos – most of them from Hong Kong, London and Riyadh – had voted as of 11:20 a.m. (Manila time). The breakdown was as follows: 997 in Hong Kong, 558 in London, 266 in Riyadh, 242 in Chicago, 218 in Singapore, 180 in Jeddah, 144 in Berlin, 135 in Madrid, 118 in Bangkok and 117 in Barcelona. The first Filipino to vote in Hong Kong was Rowena dela Cruz, an overseas Filipino worker. It took her roughly one-and-a-half minutes to complete the process of voting. Seventeen would-be voters, however, were unable to find their names on the Certified List of Overseas Absentee Voters (CLOAV). The help desk constituted by the Consulate General immediately informed the Commission on Elections (Comelec) about these cases. Despite this, DFA said that based on the monitoring by its Overseas Absentee Voting (OAV) Secretariat, the first day of overseas voting went smoothly and orderly. “Voter turnout is expected to increase on the second day of voting, since it falls on a Sunday, the usual day-off of overseas Filipinos," the DFA said. According to the Comelec, there are 589,830 registered overseas voters for the May 2010 elections. These voters are only allowed to vote for the president, the vice president, 12 senators and one party-list representative. Overseas voting in all the 92 Philippine embassies and Philippine Consulate Generals worldwide started last Saturday, April 10, and will end on May 10, the day of the first ever nationwide automated elections in the Philippines. - KBK, GMANews.TV