OFWs In Europe Want To Hear Candidates

National (as of 1:35 PM)

OFWs in Europe want to hear candidates


By LOUI GALICIA

ABS-CBN Europe News Bureau

Filipino voters in Europe fear votes from migrant workers may be wasted if senatorial candidates would not exert more effort in campaigning to overseas Filipinos.

There is only about a week left before the overseas absentee voters in the UK and Europe start to cast their ballots by postal voting that will be held from April 14 to May 14.

Europe-based Filipinos, particularly OFWs, complained that they do not have enough information on the candidates, the parties and their platforms.

Consie Lozano, a member of Amsterdam-based LIKAP, which is a Filipino-Dutch youth organization, said she doesn't even know the candidates, adding the Philippine Embassy in the Netherlands is partly to blame.

"I don't know anything about the campaign. We do not hear anything about a campaign, not even from the Philippine embassy here," she said.

Dr. Jun Saturay, an exiled political refugee, thinks that a lot of the votes will be wasted.

"We are far from home. We do not know who the candidates are and we sometimes end up voting the names that we just hear from our relatives back home," he said.

There are more than one million OFWs in Europe. Having left the Philippines to work abroad, majority of them are of voting age.

They said they do not want to vote just for the sake of voting. They want their voice to be heard through the parties or candidates that they will trust their votes with.

In the previous election, only the migrant and party list candidates came to the Netherlands to campaign.

Saturay said, "From our experience, we had visits from politicians who requested to talk to community organizations. We entertain them as part of an educational campaign to raise the awareness of Filipinos in politics."

Consul Leila Lora-Santos from the Philippine Embassy in the Hague, however, explained the embassy is in no position to speak for candidates and that its role is in disseminating information on the overseas absentee voting procedure. This the embassy has done intensively, the consul said, by posting announcements in community newsletters as well as in sending letters to the different Filipino community organizations in the Netherlands.

In an interview with Balitang Europe, representatives of the two major opposing parties in the Philippines, Bam Aquino and Rep. Juan Edgardo Angara, said the biggest hurdle in reaching out to Filipino communities abroad is finances.

Angara, son of Team Unity senatorial candidate Edgardo Angara, said: "It's expensive to do the traditional ways of campaigning here like buying ads on TV or putting up posters."

Aquino, meanwhile, that aside from financial constraints, it is also time consuming for candidates to go to Europe to campaign. Aquino is cousin to GO senatorial candidate Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III.

"I guess the best way to campaign here is just to come out on TFC or other channels or promote themselves through commercials because basically, going here may not be too practical for the candidate," Aquino said.

Angara also told ABS-CBN Europe he is not happy with the way the campaign is going in the Philippines."

It's a little sad so far," Angara said, pointing out the " negative campaigns rather than a chance to educate the voters. It's very sad because it comes out like a race to the bottom instead of race to the top."

SOURCE: WWW.ABS-CBNNEWS.COM

http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/storypage.aspx?StoryID=72598