OAV turnout only at 13%; more voters encouraged

With only a little over a week remaining in the month-long overseas absentee voting (OAV), only about 80,000 Filipinos of the close to 600,000 have cast their ballots as of April 30. In a statement, the Department of Foreign Affairs-OAV Secretriat said 80,129 overseas Filipinos have voted as of 4 p.m. on April 30, or almost three weeks since the OAV started on April 10. The figure was just about 13 percent of the total 589,830 overseas Filipinos registered to vote for the national elections this year. The Philippine Consulate General in Hong Kong continues to top the list with 22,607 votes cast, followed by the Philippine Embassies in Riyadh with 6,182 ballots and Singapore with 4,928. Other diplomatic posts with the highest number of votes cast are the Consulate General in Jeddah (3,947), the Philippine Overseas Labor Office in Al Khobar (2,942), the Embassy in Kuwait (2,406), the Consulate General in Los Angeles (2,337), the Embassy in Abu Dhabi (1,761), the Consulate General in New York (1,681) and the Embassy in London (1,610). Amid the low turnout, the DFA has reiterated its calls on Filipino communities worldwide to encourage their members to participate in the OAV. "The cooperation, assistance and support of all Filipino community leaders and organizations is key to ensuring the success of the OAV exercise. It is one's civic responsibility to cast his ballot during election elections," OAV Secretariat chair Rafael Seguis said in the same release. He likewise encouraged all the 92 Embassies and Consulates General across the world to tap the Filipino organizations in their areas to make sure the campaign to encourage increased participation in the OAV reaches as many voters as possible. The first OAV, conducted in the 2004 presidential elections, registered a 65 percent voter turnout, but plummeted to just 16 percent in 2007, when voters elected only senators and a party-list representative. In this year’s elections, overseas Filipinos are voting for a president, a vice president, 12 senators and a party-list representative. —KBK, GMANews.TV