Philippines’s Department of Foreign Affairs Disenfranchise Voters, Sabotage Democracy: Group
| 
Subscribe: Philippines: Comelec Weeds Out 1.1 Million Deceitful Voters
Philippines’s poll body to probe missing voters’ names
Exclusion of ‘fraudulent’ Maguindanao canvass sought
Philippines: All Systems Go for Absentee Voting — DFA Exec
Philippines, Spain sign treaty on transfer of sentenced persons
The system of embassies and consular offices of the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) collects millions of dollars from overseas Filipino workers in the form of passport fees, taxes and other levies on the “disposable” population of the Philippines, a population which is now the mainstay of Filipino economy. With some $19 billion in remittances from Filipinas and Filipinos who work relentlessly, often under intolerable conditions and in unbearable alienation from home, family and community, one would expect the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Philippine Commission on Elections (Comelec) to be most energetic in ensuring that overseas Filipinos are empowered and enabled to participate in the electoral process, that they are provided with the means to have a voice in the choice of Philippine political leadership. Were wealth and resources truly the determinants for influence in Philippine politics – which is the usual explanation for the enormous influence of landlords, warlords, bosses and corporations – then, logically, overseas Filipinos would have a significant presence in electoral politics.
This should be the case, but it is NOT. Because even the mere act of casting a vote is made so complicated, the process fraught with opportunities for fraud and betrayal, that most overseas Filipino workers would rather just ignore it. There are reasons why the voter turn out is so low in the United States: There are no polls; one cannot go to an embassy or consulate to cast one’s ballot; the ballots are mailed and if they get lost in the mails, tough luck; you have to mail your vote back and if that gets lost in the mail, well, so sorry. One can’t even have proof that one did cast one’s ballot, hence there’s no certainty that the vote count will be accurate. Everything is impersonal – violating what makes elections attractive to Filipino voters: that our brand of politics is upfront and personal.
“It’s ironic because the DFA keeps saying that this election period is a time for Overseas Filipino’s voices to be heard,” said USC graduate student, Jollene Levid, “But how? There is not even a chance for exit polling the way they have the system set up in the US. The community’s voices aren’t being heard, they are being silenced. What is the DFA trying to hide?”
“We assure the public there will be no fraud happening,” Undersecretary Rafael Seguis of the DFA and chairman of the Overseas Absentee Voting (OAV) secretariat proclaimed. But, ask an ordinary Filipino walking the streets of New York or Los Angeles or Chicago and they will tell you that they don’t know a) where and when to go to register; b) what is necessary so he/she could register; c) where and when to get a ballot and vote; and d) who’s running? They will add, moreover, that there is no guarantee that the Philippine embassy and consular offices won’t be tipping off US immigration as to where “undocumented” Filipinos are so they can be deported. Distrust of the Philippine embassy and consulates run extremely deep in the Filipino-American community – and it is a distrust richly deserved.
Even those Filipinos who are ready to vote cannot get reliable information despite all the claims of the DFA that they are doing all they can to increase the overseas voting turnout. “I called the consulate offices,” says one Los Angeles Filipina, “and they told me that it was too late to vote. It was only April 17th!” Considering that elections happen periodically, one would expect the Department of Foreign Affairs, so useless to the everyday lives and work of overseas Filipinos, to be joyful over the chance to be of real service to the people. At the very least, one would expect it to launch a campaign to enlist voters, to entice voters, if only to make Filipinos overseas feel part of the governmental system they make possible with their remittances, taxes and fees. One would expect the whole Foreign Service to be ecstatic over the chance to be of some value to the people who make possible their salaries, their $10,000-a-month apartments, their facials, facelifts and shopping sprees. But ask any consular officer about any possibility of any program to benefit Filipinos overseas and the reply is to cite a lack of funds, “no budget for those types of programs” and more to that affect. Worse still, it seems that the DFA and the Comelec blame overseas Filipinos themselves for the low voter turnout citing lack of enthusiasm, misunderstanding laws and regulations, and disinterest due to registration processes.
Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and her tweedle-dee, tweedle-dum advisers tout the claim that the Philippines is a democracy while subtly ensuring that voting, the simplest form of democratic action, cannot be exercised by the nearly three million Filipinos in the US. We urge the Philippine Congress to launch an investigation into this problem, and call on the six progressive political parties, most especially the Gabriela Women’s Party, to focus public attention on the continuing disenfranchisement of overseas workers, particularly of women overseas voters who comprise 65% of the 8 million Filipinos residing and working outside the archipelago. ###
_____________________________________________________
Annalisa Vicente Enrile, Ph.D.
Chairperson, GABRIELA Network
PO Box 403, Times Square Station
New York, New York 10036
Tel: 1.619.316.0920
Email: chair@gabnet.org
GABRIELA Network is a Philippine-US women’s solidarity mass organization. GABNet
provides the means by which Filipinas in the US can empower themselves,
functions as training ground for women’s leadership, and articulates the
women’s point of view. GABNet effects change through organizing, educating,
fundraising, networking, and advocacy.
****** INBOX is an archive of press releases, statements, announcements, letters to the editors, and manifestos sent to Davao Today for publication. Please email your materials to davaotoday@gmail.com. Davao Today reserves the right to edit or refuse material for publication. *****
Davao firms to issue warning on closures, retrenchments
You must be logged in to post a comment.