INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines – Hundreds of Filipinos overseas trooped to Philippine Embassies and Consulates worldwide at the start of the registration for Overseas Absentee Voting (OAV) last Tuesday May 6, 2014.
In the Philippine Embassy in Singapore, 49 Filipinos registered on the first day, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said in a statement.
“The Embassy was able to record a total of forty-nine (49) registrants for overseas voting. Some of the applicants who were in the Embassy processing other consular documents took the time to register as voters for the registration process as well,” it said.
“New registrants will join the over 50,000 overseas voters allowed to vote in Singapore for the upcoming overseas voting process in tandem with the national elections of 2016,” the statement said.
There is a total of 184,498 permanent, temporary, and irregular Filipinos in Singapore as of December 2012, according to records of the Commission on Filipinos Overseas (CFO).
In the Philippine Consulate General in Hong Kong, the first registrant was Philip Tubeza, a former reporter of the Philippine Daily Inquirer who is now working for Hong Kong News.
“[Tubeza] was already at the Philippine Consulate General 30 minutes before the opening time. This will be Tubeza’s first time to register as a voter,” the Consulate said in a statement.
CFO has recorded 195,128 permanent, temporary, and irregular Filipinos in Hong Kong.
In Saudi Arabia where there are more than 1.2 million Filipinos, 141 applicants registered for OAV in the Philippine Embassy in Riyadh on the first day.
“A total of 141 applications for registration were facilitated by the Embassy on the first day,” the Embassy said in their statement. An outreach mission is also set to be conducted from May 9 to 10 in the Eastern Province of the Middle Eastern country.
“The Philippine Embassy in Riyadh will conduct its first Overseas Voting Registration outreach mission in the Eastern Province on 09 to 10 May 2014. The Overseas Voting Registration will coincide with the Embassy-on-Wheels (EOW) mission to be held at Al Jazeera International School in Dammam,” the embassy said.
Philippine Embassies in Berlin, Germany, Vienna, Austria, and Paris, France also announced a smooth first day of OAV registration.
The voting registration for the May 2016 presidential elections will run from May 6, 2014 to October 31, 2015.
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