Arroyo pushes absentee voting

LOS ANGELES, California (via PLDT) — President Arroyo arrives here Saturday night in traditional Filipino style — bearing "pasalubong" (gifts) for about two million Filipino-Americans from all over the United States.

Her gift: Good news from the Philippines regarding the passage by Congress of the Overseas Voting Act of 2003.

In fact, a team of officials from the Commission on Elections (Comelec) is flying here by the end of May, after Mrs. Arroyo’s state visit to Washington DC, to conduct a series of seminars at the Philippine consulate on how to implement the newly enacted absentee voting law in time for the May 2004 national elections, Consul General Marciano Paynor Jr. told the Philippine media delegation.

Paynor said the Comelec team is due to arrive in Los Angeles to conduct the first of a series of seminars to brief the largest Filipino community in the US about the "pilot testing" of the absentee voting law.

In her previous two visits to the US since assuming the helm of government in 2001, President Arroyo promised at meetings with Filipino-American communities to work towards the passage by Congress and enactment of the absentee voting law. – Marichu Villanueva