Opinions on the Absentee Voting Bill
Below is a selection of opinion column articles on the issue of the Absentee
Voting bill for Overseas Filipinos.
ALMOST everyone recognizes the right to vote of all qualified Filipinos residing abroad. The 1987 Constitution explicitly instructs Congress to pass a law that will make absentee voting possible. Sixty-four bills have been filed to give flesh to the Constitution's mandate, and five successive Congresses have intermittently debated its provisions. Yet for the last 15 years, our legislators have failed to pass this law.
What appears to be at issue is not the right to vote itself, but the details of its implementation. I suspect that Congress wants to be very sure that defects that seem inherent in our whole electoral system are not reproduced and allowed to further complicate an already problematic process.
There is definitely a need to review the Omnibus Election Code and to ask why so many of its important provisions are not being implemented. But it is not fair to continue denying overseas Filipinos the right to vote just because we do not trust our existing electoral process. We should not expect a supplementary law like the Absentee Voting Law to perform the more general task of reforming our electoral system.
To postpone giving overseas Filipinos the right to vote until we can find a 100-percent tamper-proof method for registering them and counting their ballots is to place our accumulated distrust in our political culture ahead of our hopes. It would be like limiting the right of suffrage to those with property out of fear that the propertyless would sell their votes, or to men out of fear that women, having less education, would not know how to exercise this right. Had we allowed ourselves to be intimidated by these fears, the women and the poor in our country would have remained disenfranchised spectators to our political life.
To demand guarantees against cheating beyond what is reasonable, and on the basis of our own worst expectations about human nature, is to act like caciques reluctantly dispensing rights to ignorant peasants. I am willing to bet, having seen the passion with which overseas Filipino workers' groups have campaigned for the passage of the absentee voting bill, that the conduct of the absentee vote will be far more orderly than any election held within the country. Modern technology has made it much easier than we can imagine to monitor complex processes and track their outcomes. It has also made it possible for individuals living in different parts of the world to regularly interact with one another and form viable communities.
Yet, to be fair, Congress cannot entirely be blamed for wanting to craft a law that already incorporates the detailed implementing rules and regulation. The mandate found in Art. V, Sec. 2 of the Constitution calls for "a system for securing the secrecy and sanctity of the ballots as well as a system of absentee voting by qualified Filipinos abroad." This curious phrasing puts the safeguards ahead of the more important provision for the absentee voting right itself. At once, the formulation alerts one to the risks to which the voting process is exposed when it is not conducted all the way under the watchful presence of electoral officials.
It is amazing to see the inordinate attention given to matters of implementation in a nation's fundamental law. I think it is symptomatic of the paranoid way in which we have tended to conduct the business of government. The laws and policies by which we run our nation's life seem to be driven less by the need to achieve certain goals than by the concern to prevent their abuse. An attitude like this is bound to produce an accretion of negatively oriented laws whose main reason for existence is to plug loopholes in existing procedures.
One can almost read, for example, the whole history of cheating in our country between the lines of our massive Omnibus Election Code. What we have codified here, it seems, is the record of all our previous attempts to cope with the consequences of the misplaced creativity of a few who lived to outsmart the electoral process. The result of this, as we all know, is a process of electing leaders that is probably the most complex in the world.
Most likely it is this same mind-set that has shaped the legislative debate on the absentee voting bill. Our bright and sensitive legislators have been trying to plug not only the loopholes of the existing electoral system but also the ones yet to be conceived in the fertile minds of their colleagues. This is a tough job even for those who are firmly committed to the passage of the law. It will never be completed as long as we are searching for the perfect "system for securing the secrecy and sanctity" of the absentee voters' ballots.
My suggestion is: Let's pass the law now and trust instead in our people's instinct to protect their basic rights even when they have to work with imperfect procedures. They will evolve their own safeguards in the course of their own practice. They will invent mechanisms appropriate to the different contexts in which they live. There is every reason to be confident about this. The enthusiastic campaign for the absentee voting bill is creating a global movement of overseas Filipinos who are keenly aware of the problems of our country and assertive of their right to participate in the shaping of its future.
The enfranchisement of more than five million overseas Filipinos will definitely affect
the terrain of our political life. There can be no doubt that the change will be for
the better. They are a more demanding constituency. They think we're losing time. They
want to see a future that will offer their children hope without having to leave the
homeland.
THE HOUSE of Representatives continues to offer resistance to the overseas vote. I understand Didagen Dilangalen has threatened to sue the overseas groups that, from sheer frustration, have begun naming the congressmen who have been throwing obstacle upon obstacle into their path. And putting those names up in the Internet for all the world to see, and not vote for.
I myself have given the overseas groups the unsolicited advice that they should do everything in their power to provoke Dilangalen some more. The last time the fellow tried to gag somebody, he sparked an impeachment trial and the downfall of a president. That was when he prevented Chavit Singson from spilling the beans on Joseph Estrada in Roilo Golez's committee, in part by raising all sorts of legal gobbledygook and in the main by drowning all other voices in the room with his shrill and irritating one. The public's reaction to it was swift and decisive. It demanded that Singson be allowed to tell every last sordid detail.
I most sincerely hope Dilangalen sues his tormentors. That should hasten the process considerably.
It's the House bill that puts up all sorts of riders and caveats to the overseas vote. The Senate bill is fairly straightforward. It covers "all Filipino citizens overseas who can present proof of their Filipino citizenship" and takes effect 15 days after publication. The House bill removes immigrants and permanent residents from coverage and applies only to the 2004 elections. For Filipinos abroad to continue voting after 2004, Congress must pass another law to enable it and only upon the recommendation of the oversight committee. Immigrants and permanent residents comprise around two and half million souls. And a law that applies only to 2004 means that Filipinos abroad will have to go through the whole trouble again to get the vote after that.
The Senate bill is still the thing to bat for. But I figure we can always settle for the House version if it can't be had (the cutoff point is the end of the year) just so we can finally give Filipinos abroad the vote. The overseas voters can always punish the congressmen who have been making their lives difficult with the same vote they are being given grudgingly and thriftily. And I figure you can't put the genie back in the lamp after you spring it out. Filipinos abroad get to vote in 2004, and hell and high water may not prevent them from voting again in subsequent elections, however the exercise gets blindsided by irregularities. Heaven help any congressman who gets in their path then.
It's time the overseas Filipinos got the vote. The figures alone argue formidably for their cause. There are (as of December 2000) some 7.38 million Filipinos abroad: 2.9 million overseas Filipino workers (OFWs), 2.5 million permanent residents, and 1.8 million irregulars. You take away the permanent residents, and you still have close to five million voters. That's a lot of Filipinos being disenfranchised.
This is no ordinary group of voters moreover. I said before, and I say again, that you give the vote to overseas Filipinos and you improve the voting stock overnight. These are voters who are beyond the pale of "guns, goons, and gold". Additionally, their exposure to other cultures and systems would have expanded their horizons and opened their eyes to possibilities. Travel does broaden the mind, even the kind where the traveler ends up being confined to grilled quarters. At least they would have had the opportunity to compare systems, if not worlds, which is a huge aid to critical judgment.
And technology has made it possible for them to keep close tabs with what's happening in the country. If EDSA People Power II is any indication, they just do not keep touch of local developments, they follow it with a passion and doggedness you won't find among many locals. Many locals prefer to forget what's happening in the country lest they join the 19 percent of the population that wants to leave it.
Quite apart from that, and this is the truly awesome thing, they have contributed a total of 41.6 billion dollars to the economy from 1990 to 2000. The idea that they are the country's modern-day heroes is not an exaggerated one. Without them, this country would have died long ago, or sunk in the mire of the Fourth World, hat and begging bowl in hand. The American Revolution was waged on one principle, which is "no taxation without representation". We don't give the overseas Filipinos the vote, and we give them every reason to mount a revolution of their own. Certainly, we give them every reason to boycott a government that can't show them basic gratitude, or decency.
But in the end, it's more than that they've shown they deserve the vote by their awesome contributions to society. It is simply that it is their right to vote, as Filipino citizens. Why the congressmen keep forgetting that, I do not know. Their main objection to the overseas vote -- it's way up in the list -- is the fear of irregularities. Well, the local vote is riddled with irregularities, too-probably more so than the overseas vote will be, given guns, goons and gold -- but you do not withhold the vote from local residents because of it. You do not say, "We will not allow you to vote na lang because we cannot guarantee that you will not be cheated." That is stupid. But so is telling the overseas Filipinos the same thing. A government that withholds a right from a citizen because it cannot defend that right has no business existing.
But all this is past argument. I support entirely the overseas
groups' tack of putting out the names of the congressmen who insist
on stealing not just their taxes but their right to vote. Now, if
they can only bring those names from the Internet to the pages of
newspapers....
The following are a few out of the scores of e-mail I got these last couple of days from activists in the global movement to promote passage of the Absentee Voting Bill (AVB):
From Miguel Bolos, writing from Riyadh on behalf of e-Lagda and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia based International Coalition for Overseas Filipino Voting Rights (ICOFVR-KSA): “Dear Mr. Bas — Just a short note of thanks for you and The Manila Times’ unwavering support for the cause of the overseas Filipino workers (OFWs). Thank you very much from the bottom of our hearts. More power to The Times and may your tribe increase. — Mike C. Bolos.”
The other day, ICOFVR-KSA launched the “Tutukan ang mga Kongresman” (Prod the Congressmen) campaign for the AVB at the Philippine Embassy. Cultural Attaché Carmelita A. Hidalgo was there. The campaign involves OFWs themselves communicating to congressmen their wish that the AVB be enacted. It also calls for OFWs to get their families back home here to take a stand — and work — for the campaign. Mike Bolos, for ICOFVR-KSA, wrote this letter last Friday to Filipino editors:
“Fifteen years have come and gone and still the constitutionally mandated Absentee Voting Bill is nowhere in sight for us OFWs. We are sick and tired of waiting for our legislators to do their job of passing the bill into law that has long been debated and rehashed many times over either out of malice, ignorance or just plain grandstanding by some legislators.
“There is not much time left to pass this bill in order to enable the OFWs to vote in 2004. This year (2002) is the make or break year for the Absentee Voting Bill because the passage of the bill into law is just the beginning rather than the end of the process to put this particular piece of legislation into effect.
“The budget for its implementation must be provided in 2003, which is impossible unless it is passed in 2002. The implementing rules and regulations to be formulated and refined and all the safeguards and mechanisms that need to be put into place will most likely take up the whole of 2003. As such, there is really not much time left for the bill to be passed in time for 2004 elections.
“This fact seems to escape our honorable legislators who are sadly mistaken in their thoughts that there is plenty of time left between now and the 2004 elections so, why the hurry as some of them have been quoted to have opined in this regard.
“Would you please help us, the millions of OFWs around the world by drawing attention to our clamor for the passage of the Absentee Voting Bill so that we may not only become the country’s economic saviors but its political saviors as well.”
This e-mail is from J.M. Capinig: “Magandang araw sa yo at sa lahat ng taga Manila Times! Nasabi sa amin ni Kuya Marvin that you support the cause of the OFW! MABUHAY KAYONG LAHAT! Ulit! Maraming-maraming salamat! — Feb-feb Capinig, USA”
Then there’s this one, also from the States, from a fellow member of last year’s international delegation of overseas Filipinos, OFWs abroad and pro-OFW/AVB activists based in Manila who convened here a year ago.
Our delegation met with members of the House and the Senate, including Senate President Drilon and Speaker de Venecia. And we were graciously treated to a breakfast meeting by President Macapagal-Arroyo, a long-time supporter of the bill.
“Rene: This is Cathy Alviso! It’s been a year since we had that breakfast at Malacañang. Remember? Anyway, just sending you a quick note of thanks for your continued support in advocating the Absentee Voting Bill! We follow your column here sa States. Sabi nga ni Marvin, ‘Maaasahan ka talaga!’ Regards, Cathy Alviso.”
Marvin is Marvin Bionat, based in Boston, and one of the original founders of the global coalition for the AVB. Some weeks ago, he circulated the “TALSIK” message. Marvin is soft-spoken and very gentlemanly. But the delays in passing the AVB must have made him hot under the collar.
His “Talsik!” message is a call to mobilize OFW and overseas Filipinos to work against the reelection of congressmen opposed to the AVB. There are not so many of them. But they have effectively blocked passage of the bill. They deserve to be “Talsiked.”
The opposition congressmen’s reaction was hostile. Congressman Ronaldo Zamora spoke against the OFWs contemptuously.
Congressman Ruffy Biazon offers to “act as a bridge” between the OFWs and those on the Talsik list, “particularly my colleagues who belong to the House minority (Dilangalen, Zamora, Remulla, Padilla).” Congressman Biazon suggests: “…I do not know if your group has already done it, but perhaps even a dialogue between your group and the House minority would help the cause. You have people attending the sessions, where they spend a lot of time observing the sessions, only a fraction of which is spent on the AVB. That’s a lot of time wasted. Instead, they can try sitting down with the specific congressmen and do face to face lobbying.”
Point well made, Mr. Biazon.
But we must still pursue the “Talsik campaign” against politicians who are anti-OFW/OF.
See also: Materials on Overseas Voting
