By Vir B. Lumicao
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| OV registration used to be done in the Consulate's lift lobby (File) |
There has been an upsurge in the number of Hong Kong-based Filipinos registering to vote in next year’s general elections, to be held a month before Presidential Rodrigo Duterte wraps up his six-year term.
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The Consulate confirmed today, Aug 9, the sudden increase in registration, after months of a noticeable slowdown because of the pandemic. The registration closes on Sept 30.
Consul General Raly Tejada said the registration fever began last month and has been going on these past Sundays, when most Filipino migrant workers are taking their rest day.
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Aside from electing a new president in the May 9, 2022 general elections, voters will also vote for a new vice-president, senators, as well as provincial and municipal officials.
“Yes, I can confirm that there is a sudden upsurge in voter registration since last month. Busiest day is Sunday with at least 200 registrants queuing up to register,” ConGen Tejada said in reply to an online inquiry.
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He said he hopes many more would-be voters will come and list up in the remaining eight weeks of registration, which began on Dec 16, 2019.
“Hopefully there will be more, but I encourage our nationals to avoid coming on a Sunday due to the huge volume of people,” ConGen Tejada said. He encouraged them to come from Monday to Thursday, which is when the PCG is less crowded.
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The consul general admitted overseas voter registration took a blow from the pandemic, especially at its height when registrants came in trickles. He said it was only these last two months that registration picked up.
“Wala din namang choice ang mga kababayan dahil sa restrictions at social distancing measures. But I am glad they are now coming to register,” ConGen Tejada said.
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He did not give a target number for the current overseas voting registration.
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| Consul Quintin says the pandemic continues to have an adverse effect on OV registration |
Consul Robert Quintin, who is in charge of the PCG’s election preparations, said:
“As far as targets go, we’re not looking at that anymore obviously because of the pandemic, which has practically put us on hold, and it still continues to affect registration.
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“Athough we’ve had a surge in the last few weeks, we’re just trying to register as many as we can and, if we’re lucky, we might still hit a better-than-expected result.”
There were 87,441 registered voters in the 2019 mid-term elections, when the Filipino electorate chose new senators.
That
year, the Commission on Elections deactivated more than 16,000 overseas voters
in
As in previous mid-term elections, the number of registered voters in 2019 was lower than the 93,000 who registered for the May 2016 elections, when Duterte was elected into office.
But traditionally, the total registration figure should have picked up again. However, the latest Consulate figures are not readily available.
Just
weeks after the Consulate announced the resumption of voter registration in
December 2019,
That forced the host government to impose health protocols designed to halt the spread of the virus, and tighten them intermittently, depending on the number of new cases being reported on a daily basis.
Foreign
consulates in
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| PCG cut down on face-to-face transactions due to the pandemic This
restricted the PCG’s ability to reach out to more potential registrants, unlike
in previous elections when staff and volunteers were deployed for
territory-wide campaigning as well as mobile registration. Instead of doing outreach registration, the Consulate has been promoting the Facebook page of the Commission on Elections Office for Overseas Voting which allows Filipino voters to make the following types of transactions: |
·
Registration
(certification) as overseas voters filed by those with existing voting records
·
Reactivation of
overseas voter registration records
·
Updating of addresses
and contact information, and
·
Transfer of voting
records from different international locations and from overseas.
However, the Comelec’s step-by-step guide to online voting registration appears too hard for some OFWs. This shows on the workers’ queries in the comment box of the Consulate’s post, where most of them were asking, “How do we register?”
Those who
have just moved to
To find
out whether you need to register or not, please check the certified list of
overseas voters in
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PADALA NA!
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