MANILA – Filipino lawmakers appealed to the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to extend the registration of Filipino voters, whose deadline is just six days away from Monday on October 31.
Opposition Senators Francis Escudero and Alan Peter Cayetano pointed out that the extension is needed as they pointed out the two recent disastrous typhoons that hit the country prevented thousands of voters, especially the young, from registering at the Comelec offices so they could vote in the May 2010 presidential elections.
Many of those who failed to register, Escudero and Cayetano said, come from the vote-rich areas, including Metro Manila as well as Northern, Central and Southern Luzon, which were hit by the back-to-back typhoons “Ondoy†and “Pepeng†starting September 2.
The two lawmakers also cited the urgent need for the extension, saying that the Comelec does not have enough computers to cope with the large number of especially young voters who have been flocking to the Comelec offices to register after the departure of Ondoy (international codename Ketsana) and Pepeng (international codename Parma).
But a Comelec spokesman said the agency is not inclined to extend the registration, saying it is now busy in its preparation, among others, for the conduct of the country’s first-ever computerized polls next year.
These include, he said, the cleaning the of lists of voters of “flying voters (those who go from a polling precinct to a neighboring one to cast their ballots) and those who already died as well as the printing of ballots to be used in the 2010 elections.
But, at the same time, the spokesman blamed the crowd now flocking to the Comelec offices to the “mañana†(Spanish term for “tomorrowâ€) habit of the Filipinos, or their tendency to wait for the last minute before doing anything, like registering as voters. Moreover, the spokesman said that starting October 20, Comelec field offices have been ordered to open from 8 am to 9 am from Monday to Saturday to register new voters.
But on October 31, the last day of registration, Comelec offices will be open until midnight, the spokesman announced.
In addition, he said the Comelec allowed the registration on Sundays but only in areas in Luzon which were affected by Ondoy and Pepeng and later by typhoon Ramil (international codename Lupit, or “cruel†in Filipino).
These are Metro Manila and the provinces of Ilocos Sur, Ilocos Norte, Pangasinan and La Union in Northern Luzon, the Cordillera Administrative Region in the Northern Luzon highlands, Southern Luzon, Bicol and Isabela and Cagayan in Cagayan Valley in extreme Northern Luzon, according to the spokesman.
He also disclosed the Comelec has field 62 more data capturing machines to 30 areas in Metro Manila to speed up the registration of voters.
Even with the problems now being encountered, however, the spokesman said they expect at least 500,000 new voters to register for next year’s elections.
He said an updated figure on the number of registered voters is not yet out but that they expect this to significantly exceed the 45 million registered voters in the 2007 elections.
As of July, the spokesman said the Comelec had already pegged the number of voters at around 47 million.
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