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80K Catholic school students to serve as poll watchers – official


Instead of going to malls or to the beach, at least 80,000 tech-savvy college students from Catholic schools will be deployed to polling precincts this Monday to serve as poll watchers. Catholic Educational Association of the Philippines (CEAP) president Msgr. Gerry Santos said most of these students from the CEAP’s 1,200 member schools are computer-savvy. “They are IT (information technology) savvy and can do some computer troubleshooting," Santos said in an article posted Saturday on the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines news site. “It’s time for students to get involved. They should not cower," he added. Santos said they initially expected at least 100,000 student volunteers, but only some 80,000 officially signed up. With the volunteers, Santos said CEAP will provide the “warm bodies" to be trained and transformed by the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) into poll watchers. For its part, the PPCRV had said it has about one million volunteer poll watchers. Santos said they had been sending requests since January for volunteer poll watchers, preferably 18 years old and above, and who are IT savvy. But Santos admitted students and their parents and schools will have to discern if they would be deployed in “hot spots" or areas of concern. “We should pray that no harm would come to our young volunteers," he said. Meanwhile, the CBCP intensified its political advocacy with the launch of an online coverage of the May 10 elections. CBCP spokesman Msgr. Pedro Quitorio III said Operation CHAMP is a multimedia monitoring system to pursue clean, honest, accurate, meaningful and peaceful (CHAMP) polls. “We will cover all the dioceses across throughout the country by gathering news stories, commentaries, photos, audio and video clips of issues and events relative to the elections," he said. Operation CHAMP will involve the Association of Major Religious Superiors of the Philippines, Knights of Columbus, STI, National Secretariat for Social Action, poll watchdog Kontra Daya, and YouthPinoy. — LBG, GMANews.TV

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