OFW Forum
The anticipated stiff battle for the presidency by Vice President Leni Robredo and ex-Senator Ferdinand Marcos Jr is likely to boost the number of overseas Filipinos who will cast their votes at the upcoming national elections in May 2022.
More than ample indications of overseas Filipinos’ keen interest in next year’s national elections are getting more and more evident. A major driver of this growing interest are supporters of Robredo in different countries who are pressing ahead with an array of mass actions to demonstrate and bolster their support for her presidential bid.
In Edmonton, Canada, for instance, dozens of Filipinos gathered happily at a snow-covered public park, apparently oblivious of the biting cold, and hoisted banners, placards and other pink paraphernalia to show their support for Robredo. They then posted on Facebook photos of their gathering even as Filipinos in other parts of Canada mapped out their own caravans and mass actions to canvass support for Robredo.
In Australia, the vice president’s supporters have outlined a calendar of caravans and other activities in the coming weeks in different cities in the country.
In Hong Kong, hundreds of Robredo supporters recently gathered outside the City Hall complex in the Central business district, the counterpart of the Makati financial hub, for a “Lugawan ni Leni” picnic-type gathering that also doubled as a meet-up of current and new members of the vice president’s support group in this city. They plan to conduct more Lugawan sessions and other activities in the coming weeks and months, including displays of tarpaulins and shirts bearing campaign slogans to entice fellow Filipinos to vote for Robredo.
Avid Robredo supporter, Myles Silva, a domestic helper in Hong Kong, said she expects a much higher voter turnout in this city in 2022 than the level during the 2016 poll when Rodrigo Duterte won the presidency and Robredo, the vice president’s post.
“I often hear and observe that there are far more Ilocanos here than any other ethnic group, and this understandably explains the large number of Marcos supporters. But unlike in the 2016 election when Duterte supporters far outnumbered those of the opposition, the situation in 2022 will be very much different. Robredo supporters are very much committed to ensuring that she gets more votes here than in the 2016 poll,” she said.
“We plan to actively campaign for VP Leni and we intend to give a good fight to die-hard Marcos fans here in Hong Kong,” she added.
Her recent experience registering recently as an overseas voter made her assume that the number of Filipinos in Hong Kong who registered as voters and who will cast their votes in 2022 would be significantly higher than that in previous national elections. “There was an extremely long queue of people, including myself, who registered to vote in 2022. I queued up for over five hours and I was very much exhausted when my registration was completed only at 3 in the morning,” she said.
Of the estimated 300,000-strong Filipino community in Hong Kong, the number of registered voters has often remained at just about 100,000. Of the total, only just about half cast their votes, especially during mid-term elections. But with the 2022 presidency expected to be hotly contested by the two leading presidential contenders, Marcos and Robredo, the actual number of overseas voters in Hong Kong and other jurisdictions around the world is widely expected to be significantly higher than that in previous polls.
Historically, the actual number of votes cast by overseas Filipinos has actually been far lower than the number of those who live and work outside the country. In 2016, for instance, only a third or 432,706 of the 1.37 million registered overseas voters cast their ballots, according to the Commission on Elections. However, the disappointing low voter turnout should not be attributed solely to disinterest and lack of proper appreciation of one’s civic duty to participate in the electoral exercise to choose the country’s next batch of leaders.
“Here in Saudi Arabia, It’s very hard for many OFWs to cast their votes even if they wish to because they need to ride a plane or travel for many hours by land just to reach the nearest Philippine consulate or embassy where they can vote,” said Eli Mua, an OFW rights advocate. “The government has to devise a secure and efficient postal or automated voting scheme to enable many OFWs to participate in the country’s major elections,” he said. He laments that “it’s very ironic that our country ‘exports’ many of our best IT or computer professionals to Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, the Middle East and even the United States, but Comelec officials have not seen fit to ask anyone or any institution to come up until now with a secure and user-friendly automated voting system.”
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