OFWs threaten to cut remittances without absentee voting law

A US-based group of overseas Filipino workers is threatening to stage a "partial remittance boycott" if a pending bill, seeking to allow about seven million OFWs to vote from abroad, is not passed by the end of October.

The Global Coalition of the Political Empowerment of Overseas Filipinos (Empower-USA) urged OFWs to use their "economic leverage" to persuade lawmakers to pass the measure which has been stuck in the Senate since May.

"The OFWs will use their ultimate economic leverage to bring the absentee voting bill to the fore and use their remittance as a weapon to urge Congress to get its act together," the group’s president, Marvin Bionat, was quoted as saying by Arab News, a newspaper catering to OFWs in Saudi Arabia.

But Bionat stressed the group was not asking OFWs to stop sending funds to their families, only to stop sending through government banks which handles around 70 percent of OFW remittances.

"This is not a call to completely stop sending funds to our families back home. We cannot punish our families for the failure of politicians," Bionat said.

But he urged OFWs to "blacklist" politicians who are blocking the passage of the bill and asked foreign agencies to stop lending money to the Philippines.

Bionat also suggested to OFWs that they send home packages instead of the usual cash gifts.

The group’s campaign is also being supported by other local OFW groups, like the Kapisanan ng mga Kamag-anak ng Migrante Mamayang Pilipino (Kakammpi).

Kakammpi launched a separate campaign, dubbed "Tutukan si Congressman," which involves asking OFWs and their families to write their congressmen to persuade them to push for the passage of the bill.

The absentee voting bill has already passed the House of Representatives after a bicameral mission conducted consultative hearings among OFWs in several countries.

But the bill hit a snag in the Senate when political bickering derailed the progress of practically all pending legislative measures.

Aside from the absentee voting bill, the other bills are the proposed Special Purpose Assets Vehicle (SPAV) Act of 2002, the franchise of the National Transmission Corp. (Transco) and the charter of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

But the opposition scored a morale-boosting victory yesterday after administration senators gave in to the opposition’s demand to immediately calendar the absentee voting bill before other measures are acted upon.