By Daisy CL Mandap
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| It took most voters around six hours of queuing to get to the gates of the Bayanihan polling centre |
More than 5,000 Filipinos who queued up an average of six hours managed to cast their ballots at the Bayanihan Centre in Kennedy Town on Sunday, Apr 17, on the second Sunday of the overseas voting in Hong Kong.
This was
according to Consul General Raly Tejada, who has been constrained by what he
said was a new resolution by the Commission on Elections prohibiting overseas posts from providing the exact
daily turnout figure.
The total tally
far exceeds the record for the 2022 election set last Friday, when Congen
Tejada said more than 3,400 people cast their ballots. On Saturday, the turnout
was “almost 3,000”.
Given all these
figures, the total turnout for the past eight days of voting is now at least
21,292.
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| Staff and volunteers try to let in as many people as possible inside Bayanihan |
At this rate,
and given that there are three more Sundays to go plus a statutory holiday on
May 1, the final turnout could easily exceed the 45,561 votes cast - or 49% of
the registered voters - posted in the 2016 presidential election.
However, the all-time record
turnout remains the 66,500 votes cast in the first overseas voting in 2004,
when manual voting was still in force. The figure represented 75% of the 89,000
registered voters that year.
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| Voters lined up to as far as 3 kilometres away |
Sunday’s record tally
was reached despite an advisory from the Consulate by midday for people to
consider going back in the afternoon to queue because the line had by then extended
to Mount Davis Path, which is about 3 km away.
The appeal set
off a buzz that the queuing was being stopped again at the police request. Not
a few people who were about to set off towards the tail-end of the line had
second thoughts about continuing.
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| PINDUTIN PARA SA DETALYE |
But this was
immediately disproved by Congen Tejada in a text message.
“It’s not true.
I talked to them,” he said. “Nakiusap
lang tayo for them to come back na lang sana mamayang hapon.” (We just
appealed to them to come back, if possible, later in the afternoon).
The previous
Sunday, the police asked Congen Tejada to cut off the queue less than four
hours after the polls opened, saying they could no longer control the crowd. Despite
this, the turnout was a remarkable 3,285.
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Another reason
for the request was because one of the vote counting machines being used in
precinct 9 had broken down, forcing many of the voters there to wait even
longer than usual to cast their ballots.
As a stop-gap
measure, Consul Bob Quintin who is deputized by Comelec to oversee the voting
in Hong Kong, had to escort the voters in batches of five to different
precincts so they could fill in the ballots there and feed them into the designated
VCM.
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Congen Tejada
assured that the machine was being fixed, and that Comelec had assured them
that additional VCMs would be sent by Wednesday.
“Hopefully they
would arrive soon so we can replace the VCM that malfunctioned,” he said.
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| The crush inside Precinct 9, where the vote counting machine conked out |
Despite the
seemingly endless queue and the hiccup with the VCM, the voting went on
smoothly, with only one voter being led away from her precinct after apparently
feeling faint from having stood for a long time and passing up on
lunch.
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| PINDUTIN PARA SA DETALYE |
One Filipina who stood by precinct no 9 at about 3:30pm said she had queued up as early at 9:30am, and managed to last only because she had brought some “suman” (sticky rice) which she munched on along the way.
Others said they
were more tired than hungry, and wished they could at least sit down when they
got to Bayanihan.
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| PRESS FOR DETAILS! |
By around 4:45pm, the line outside the polling centre had disappeared as if by magic. Three wise voters took this as an opportunity to get to the gates before the official closing time without having to queue. They managed to get through.
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| Voter search desks closed shortly after 5pm |
Then, at exactly 5pm, volunteer Marites Nuval, president of Global Alliance, pushed
the iron gate close, signaling the end of another day of voting.
The overseas voting for all Filipinos abroad has been set from Apr 10 to May 9. In the Philippines, some 67 million registered voters will get to cast their votes nationwide only on that final day.
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| PINDUTIN PARA SA DETALYE |
While voters in the Philippines get to elect both national and local officials, overseas electors can only vote for a president, vice-president, 12 senators and one partylist.
