The voter registration in the province of Palawan for the May 2022 polls will resume on March 23, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) announced Thursday, Feb. 18.
The Comelec suspended the voter registration in the island province in view of the March 13 Palawan plebiscite.
"Our voter registration is suspended from Feb. 11 to March 20. It will resume on March 23," Sheila May P. Guno from the Office of the Election Officer (OEO) in Araceli, Palawan, said in a virtual press briefing.
"The voter registration will resume March 23 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Our OEOs are open from Tuesdays to Saturdays, including holidays," she added.
Under the Voter’s Registration Act, no voter registration shall be conducted before an electoral exercise.
The Comelec originally scheduled the conduct of the plebiscite to ratify the division of the province of Palawan into Palawan del Norte, Palawan Oriental, and Palawan del Sur on May 11, 2020 as provided under Republic Act No. 11259.
The law provides that the plebiscite shall be held on the second Monday of May 2020.
In April 2020, the Comelec suspended the May 11 plebiscite due to the pandemic and government’s imposition of the Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ) in Luzon.
On October 8, 2020, the Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID) approved the proposal to already hold the plebiscite in Palawan.
The poll body then set the plebiscite on March 13, 2021.
Voter registration will run until Sept. 30, 2021.