Last Friday, I took time out to register as an overseas voter at the Philippine consulate general in Los Angeles. Now, I can look forward to actually making my choice count for president, vice president and the 12 senators who will run the country for the next six years.
If you bring with you the completed application form and your valid Philippine passport or certification of dual citizenship if you are a dual citizen, it shouldn’t take the whole morning to have your application processed. I am now one of more than 1.3 million overseas Filipino voters from all over the world whose vote can become a game changer in the expected close fight for the presidency and the vice presidency in next year’s election.
In previous national elections, the overseas Filipino vote hardly caused a dent on the election results because of the poor turnout in voter registration and even lighter turnout during the election itself. But this time, with more than 1.3 million voters and counting, the voice of the more than 11 million overseas Filipino will hopefully be heard.
With that number, plus the influence overseas Filipinos wield on their relatives back home, candidates will have to take note of our presence and our importance in the coming presidential and senatorial elections.
Under the Overseas Absentee Voting Act of 2003, citizens of the Philippines residing or working abroad who are not disqualified by law and are at least 18 years old are entitled to vote in their respective country of work or residence for the positions of president, vice president and senators.
Only 364,187 registered for the 2004 presidential elections and 233,092 actually cast their votes. The number of registered voters was a mere fraction of the more than 11 million overseas Filipinos and those who actually voted represented a 64-percent turnout. This was actually a good turnout.
In the 2010 presidential elections, the turnout was only 26 percent. In the 2013 mid-term elections, the turnout got even worse. There were 737,759 registered voters abroad, but only 113,209 were able to vote, representing a mere 15.35 percent.
Sen. Franklin Drilon said of the low turnout: “When we crafted the absentee voting law, we wanted to empower the overseas Filipino workers in the hope that at least they can influence the result of the election by electing qualified leaders. However, the turnout is getting more and more disappointing.”
He noted that a P105.038-million budget was allocated for the Comelec while the DFA received P43.41 million for the OAV for the 2013 elections. “With only 113,209 overseas Filipinos voting, the cost of each absentee vote is now P1,310 per vote. This is outrageous. I wonder how the Comelec and the DFA can justify these numbers,” Drilon said at that time.
Now it would seem Drilon wouldn’t be complaining much about the voter registration turnout for the 2016 presidential elections. Whether the actual voter turnout would surpass the 26-percent turnout in 2010 remains a big question.
It is to the credit of the personnel of the Philippine embassies and consulates abroad that the number of registered voters has leaped to 1,301,598 as of last Friday, Oct. 16, with still almost two weeks before the deadline for registration on Oct. 31.
“Since overseas Filipinos are considered to be their family’s bread winners, it is not a stretch to surmise that each overseas Filipino can influence the vote of at least three family members. Thus, the 1.3 million active registered overseas voters are roughly equivalent to 5.2 million votes. This is a definite game changer for Philippine politics,” Office of Civilian Security and Consular Concerns Undersecretary Rafael Seguis, who is concurrently Chairman of DFA-OVS, said.
Broken down by region, the Middle East and Africa have almost 550,000 active registered overseas voters, about 250,000 from the Americas, Europe about 150,000 and 320,000 from Asia and the Pacific. Registered seafarers number about 30,000.
With the coming presidential, vice presidential and senatorial elections expected to be a tight race, the 1.3 million overseas votes – not counting the number of votes overseas Filipinos can influence – could spell the difference between victory and defeat for these national candidates. Even from afar, overseas Filipinos can be a major factor in the course that the country will pursue in the next six years.
In the 1992 presidential elections, for example, Fidel Ramos won by only 874,348 votes over Miriam Defensor Santiago in a seven-way fight among major candidates. In 2004, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo won by 1.12 million votes over Fernando Poe Jr. in a fraud-marred election highlighted by the “Hello Garci” scandal. Arroyo’s running mate for vice president, Noli de Castro, bested Loren Legarda by only 881,744 votes.
In the 2010 elections, although Benigno Aquino III beat Joseph Estrada by 5.7 million votes, Estrada’s running mate Jejomar Binay won over Manuel Roxas III by only 727,084 votes.
Overseas Filipinos, particularly those in the United States and other developed nations, have seen how democracy works in their adopted countries and have a more objective view of what is happening and what is good for the homeland. It is hoped that the more than 1.3 million overseas Filipino voters would yield more intelligent votes.
Leaders of overseas Filipinos all over the world fought a long and hard battle to gain voting rights for those who cannot go back to the Philippines to vote. There have been four elections since then, and we still have to show that it was worth the struggle and the expense on the part of the government to give us back the right to help determine the destiny of our beloved country.
For those who qualify, it is not just a right but also a duty to register and vote, both as an absentee voter in our homeland and also in our respective adopted country.
(valabelgas@aol.com)