THE Department of Foreign Affairs yesterday said the conduct of the overseas absentee voting was successful, with voter turnout comparably higher than in the last presidential elections in 2016.
DFA Overseas Voting Secretariat vice chair Zoilo Velasco said reports provided by its foreign service posts, including embassies and consulates, showed a 33 percent voter turnout, compared to the 31.5 percent in the 2016 polls.
Voter turnout was high in Hong Kong, Singapore, Dubai, Abu Dhabi; Riyadh, Al Khobar, and Jeddah all in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, San Francisco in California, Tokyo, and Doha Qatar.
Velasco said the only time that voter turnout was higher than 33 percent was when 60 percent of Filipinos living abroad participated in the overseas voting system for the first time.
He said, though, that the number of registered voters at the time was much smaller than the current one.
“In terms of bilang, of voter turnout, mas mataas ngayon at successful ang overseas voting despite na may pandemic na nag-limita sa movement ng mga tao at may kaunting problema sa ilang vote counting machines (In terms of number, the voter turnout was much higher now and the conduct of the overseas voting successful despite the pandemic that limited the movement of the people and problems with some of the voting machines),” Velasco said at the Laging Handa public briefing.
“Maayos, malinis at transparent ang ating overseas election (We had a clean, honest and transparent overseas election)” he added.
DFA records show there are 1,697,215 registered voters abroad.
Overseas voting started on April 10 and ended on May 9.
The Commission on Elections previously said that they are expecting 580,212 overseas voters to participate in the elections.
Velasco said the 33 percent voter turnout is not yet final and they expect the figure to go higher once the embassies and consulates are done with the canvassing of votes.
“Within this week, inaasahan natin na matatapos na ang canvassing ng ating mga foreign service posts (Within this week, we expect our foreign service posts to finish the canvassing),” he said.
Velasco said manual canvassing is being done in countries where there is only a small number of registered Filipinos, while canvassing in other countries are done electronically.
Velasco said it is up to the Comelec if a special election will be conducted in Shanghai, China amid the continuing lockdown in the city due to the surge in COVID-19 cases.
There are more than 4, 200 Filipinos living and working in Shanghai, a city with a population of 25 million, though only over 1, 600 of them have registered to vote.
