Absentee vote law must serve as tool for reform — Angara

Sen. Edgardo Angara said yesterday that the passage of the proposed law on absentee voting would have meaning only if it is used as an effective instrument for reforms.

"It is not enough to pass the absentee voting bill into law," he said. "The law should be an instrument of change, and an awesome agent of reform."

Angara, chairman of the Senate committee on suffrage and electoral reforms, called on some seven million overseas Filipinos to use their votes intelligently so they could help realize a better government for Filipinos.

"The big number of issue oriented and economically independent votes should be used as a cleansing agent, a powerful instrument of change," Angara told some 350 overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) in Rome who attended the bicameral consultations on the absentee voting bill.

He explained that the exposure of overseas Filipinos to different forms of government and culture gives them the advantage of seeing what good governance could do for the people.

"If the absentee voting law will not translate into better lives, then it will not make any sense," Angara stressed.

The OFWs in the Rome consultations represented various Filipino groups in Italy, France and the Netherlands.

The public consultations were also attended by Senators Aquilino Pimentel Jr., Blas Ople and Panfilo Lacson, Representatives Augusto Syjuco of Iloilo, Bellaflor Angara Castillo of Aurora and Victoria Locsin of Leyte, and Chairman Alfredo Benipayo of the Commission on Elections.

Public consultations on the bill had been held in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Dubai and Saudi Arabia. After Rome, the bicameral panel will proceed to New York and Los Angeles to hear the views of Filipinos in North America.

In the previous consultations, legislators pledged to incorporate in the absentee voting bill a provision on onsite counting and canvassing of votes.

Angara also said that Congress is committed to pass the bill into law on or before June 15.