Reconciling differences require monumental effort

House, Senate versions of Absentee Voting Bill passed

By JULIE JAVELLANA-SANTOS
OFW Journalism Consortium

THE absentee voting bill (AVB) is "in the bag", and overseas Filipinos (OFs) will be able to vote in the next national elections. Or will they? Apparently, the versions approved in the Senate and in the House of Representatives are so different, reconciling them will require a monumental effort.

The bill was passed by the Senate on third reading last October 21, with 17 voting for the AVB, one against, and one abstention.

In the House of Representatives, 132 solons voted for the bill and 9 voted against, with no abstentions. The version approved in the House of Representatives on second reading last October 16 was ushered through by House Speaker Jose De Venecia Jr.

The House's approval was given on principle, without a clean copy of the bill on hand, just so that it would be passed that week, as promised by De Venecia to President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. Individual congressmen had proposed their amendments to the draft AVB, House Bill 3570, and consolidating and reconciling their differences would have delayed the presentation of the House version for approval on third reading beyond last week's self-imposed deadline.

The lone dissenter in the Senate was Senator Joker Arroyo who said he was against the AVB because it was a "faceless" process with no means of verifying the identity of the person voting. "The overseas voter's face will never be seen, from beginning (registration) to end (actual voting)," Arroyo said.

The bill, he admitted, has good intentions but "is fraught with danger", because it was "hastily done." To which AVB advocates Noel Esquela of eLagda and Ellene Sana of the Kapisanan ng mga KamagAnak ng Migranteng Manggagawang Pilipino (KAKAMMPI) asked, "How can the bill be hastily done when it took 15 years to pass?"

Vast differences between Senate, House versions

There are vast differences between the two versions, however, starting with the title of the bill which, in the Senate, is called the Overseas Absentee Voting Act of 2002, while in the House of Representatives, it is referred to as the Absentee Voting Act of 2002.

Still, legislators are optimistic that the Absentee Voting Bill will be passed and signed before Christmas. A bicameral conference committee (bicam) will be convened on November 15 to reconcile the two versions of the bill.

According to Sen. Aquilino Pimentel, the bicam will most likely be chaired by the Senate version's main sponsor, Sen. Edgardo Angara, who says that because of Congress' desire to finish the process at the soonest possible time, the original schedule of the bicameral committee might even be moved up.

'To craft a good law'

Angara said that the bicam will fuse the most outstanding provisions of the measures passed by the two chambers. The intent, he said, is not to diminish the strength and potency of the legislation but "to craft a good law".

"We come to the bicameral conference committee work with the best of intentions and this is to craft a good law. The fear that the bicameral conference committee's work will dent the lofty intent of the absentee voting measure is baseless," said Angara.

The House of Representatives will field 14 members from the majority and seven from the minority. From the majority party are Rodolfo Albano Jr., Arthur Defensor, Roseller Barinaga Jr., Salacnib Baterina, Edgar Chatto, Del de Guzman, Jesli Lapus, Teodoro Locsin Jr., Jaime Lopez, Apolinario Lozada Jr., Imee Marcos, Antonio Nachura, Loretta Ann Rosales, and Joel Villanueva.

Sitting in the committee for the minority are representatives Ronaldo Zamora, Rolex Suplico, Didagen Dilangalen, Bellaflor Angara-Castillo, Celso Lobregat, Ted Failon, and Gilbert Remulla.

Differences 'not irreconcilable'

A technical working group is being assembled to prepare a matrix comparing the two versions, which Angara maintained are "not irreconcilable". In fact, Angara is confident that the bill will be signed into law before Congress goes on Christmas break on December 19.

"There will be a law by November. The Senate and the House will reconcile the differences," said Angara, chairman of the Senate committee on constitutional amendments, revision of codes and laws and electoral reforms.

The House version of the AVB is far from ideal. For one, legal immigrants are excluded from the coverage of the Bill, which means that more than half of the seven million OFs will remain disenfranchised.

Rep. Apolinario Lozada Jr., head of the joint committees on foreign affairs, electoral reforms and labor, the sponsoring committees of HB3570, told the OFW Journalism Consortium that he wasn't satisfied with the end result. "That's not what we really envisioned from the very beginning," Lozada said.

NGO inputs in Senate version

The Senate version, principally authored by Senators Edgardo Angara and Aquilino Pimentel Jr., relied heavily on inputs from non-government organizations and overseas Filipinos (OF) for the content of the bill. Angara and several other members of the committees on constitutional amendments and on electoral reforms held public consultations with OF communities abroad before drawing up the bill.

As they stand, the two versions differ in scope. In the Senate version, absentee voters can participate in elections for all national officials (president, vice-president, senators, party-list organizations) as well as in plebiscites and referenda. In the House, this is limited to the president and vice-president, and to referenda and plebiscites.

Although this amendment was approved, Rep. Etta Rosales (Akbayan Party-List) predicted that "If the (OFs) only vote for president and vice-president, there will be a small turnout."

Sunset provision most contentious part of House bill

Ellene Sana, advocacy officer of the Kapisanan ng mga KamagAnak ng Migranteng Mamamayang Pilipino (KAKAMMPI) and Noel Esquela, Executive Director of eLagda, who are the foremost advocates of the AVB, said that the most contentious part of HB 3570 is the so-called "sunset provision" which limits the effectivity of the bill to one election. All attempts to remove this provision failed.

The provision was inserted on the instigation of Reps. Celso Lobregat (Zamboanga) and Teodoro Locsin, Jr., who claimed this was what made their version "better" than that passed in the Senate last week.

Locsin said that this provision would make it too expensive to set up a cheating machinery for the overseas elections since it could be used only once. "We have produced an intelligent version as opposed to that of the Senate which was done without much thinking," he boasted in an interview with several Manila newspapers.

"This is a bill we can fight for," he told the OFW Journalism Consortium

Problems with extended voting periods

Rep. Lobregat said Sens. Angara and Pimentel and other members of the Senate bent over too far for the OFs, citing the 30-day period allowed for them to vote in the Senate Bill, which was cut down to nine days in the House version.

"Who will guard these ballot boxes in the meantime?" Lobregat asked, implying that there is a great chance of fraud if the ballot boxes are left at the embassy for an entire month. When informed that NGOs abroad would help guard these returns, Lobregat simply said he does not trust them.

He said, "This is a catastrophe waiting to happen."

(Please see below a matrix of the Senate and House versions of the Absentee Voting Bill.)

Three million OFs disenfranchised

Locsin boasted that the House Bill is a better version than the Senate Bill, a claim that was challenged by some Filipinos living overseas.

"What is so infinitely better about the House version of the bill when three million of us have been excluded? We are the immigrants/green card holders/permanent residents who have not turned in our Philippine citizenship and have regularly gone home all the years that we've lived abroad!" said Pearl Garganera Gauzon, a lawyer and President of the Association of Ilonggos of Metropolitan Washington DC, Inc.

Ellene Sana observed, "While the Senate's version is inclusive and even liberal, the House version appears super-restrictive in many aspects."

Gauzon, who was once a member of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) and an officer of the World Bank in Washington, DC, said: "How facetious of JDV to [say that] seven million overseas Filipinos are now able to vote, when three million of the seven are green-card holders whom the House has excluded from voting."

'Already in a win-win situation'?

Rep. Jesli Lapus (Tarlac), co-chair of the joint committees on foreign affairs, electoral reforms and labor, the sponsoring committees of HB 3570, told members of the International Coalition for Overseas Filipinos Voting Rights (ICOFVR) lobbying for the bill, "I don't know what you are worried about. You are already in a win-win situation." No matter which provisions are included or deleted, OFs will be able to vote, he said.

Lapus said the bicam would just have to work on the bill to make it more palatable.

Abdulkhair "Bong" Guro, former president of KASAPI, observed that the very reason overseas Filipinos (OFs) have worked for the passage of the AVB has been negated in the current versions of the bill. "What are we fighting for? We will not have any representation in Congress," Guro told the OFW Journalism Consortium.

'We have made history'

After the bill was passed on third reading in the Senate, Angara declared, "We have made history". After, all, Angara said, OFs have been fighting for this right for 15 years.

He said special consideration is given in the bill to the more than 600,000 Filipino seafarers aboard overseas ships who are highly mobile.

Angara described the absentee voting as a gust of fresh air for the Philippine electoral system, which he earlier said, is one of the dirtiest and most corrupt in the region. Absentee voters, who are financially independent and aware of the issues, will dramatically change the face of Philippines--and for the good, he said

'Legal nexus' for Filipino permanent residents abroad

For his part, Senator Pimentel said that allowing OFs, including those who have become permanent residents in other countries, to vote would serve as the "legal nexus, the legal bond, the legal connection that makes them sovereign citizens of the land."

"If the proposal to recognize dual citizenship could apparently gain ground in this chamber, then why should anyone begrudge the grant of the absentee vote to our citizens who have merely acquired permanent residency status?" he asked.

Finally, Pimentel said, "Having been a victim of dagdag/bawas, I am certain that they (OFs) would exercise more caution and be more careful and a lot more free in choosing the people whom they would place in positions of power in the office of the President and the Vice- President, in the Senate and in the House as their party-list representatives."

"Having watched and participated in electoral exercises domestically for more than 30 years now--including the martial law years--I can say with some degree of authority that clean elections take place not only because laws and rules require the elections to be clean but more so because the people themselves make the elections clean by their vigilance," Pimentel said.

Real battle at bicam

Members of the OF community exchanging electronic-mail messages agree that the real battle over the AVB will be in the bicameral conference committee, where members of the House and the Senate will hammer out a compromise version which, hopefully, will be acceptable to both chambers, and, more importantly, to overseas Filipinos.

Marvin Bionat, a leading member of the ICOFVR based in the United States, said, "We have reached a significant milestone; it's hard to imagine any serious setback. We just have to pay attention to specific provisions (exclusion of immigrants, sunset provision, pilot testing, etc.). "

For her part, Sana cautioned OFs that the fight isn't quite over: "We still have a long way to go" at the bicameral conference committee, she said.

"But I guess, we are inching our way towards the right direction," she said at the House of Representatives the night the bill was passed. "For tonight, a toast to the AVB! It was a relief to have it out of the plenary in the House ... let us focus now on the bicam."