By Raynald C Rivera
DOHA: The Overseas Absentee Voting (OAV) for the Philippine national elections achieved yet another milestone yesterday crossing the 10,000-mark, ten days to the final day of overseas voting.
“This morning we reached 10,000 voter turnout. We will try our best to hopefully reach more than 15,000 by the end of the elections,” Consul Gonaranao B Musor, Deputy Head of Mission, told The Peninsula yesterday.
Forty-eight-year-old Zenaida Ramos Canoy became the 10,000th voter to cast vote during this year’s OAV in Qatar. Yesterday witnessed 940 voters casting their votes, bringing the total voter turnout to 10,657 which is 23.78% of the total number of registered Filipino voters in Qatar, a far cry from the total voter turnout in the last elections which was 2,800.
“We are proud that we were able to exceed the 2013 senatorial election with very large margin, and now there is a possibility that we will reach the 15,000 mark,” said Consul Musor. The success this year’s OAV is witnessing this early, he believes, was “due to a very lively campaign, interesting candidates, the social media and the fact that Overseas Filipinos’ vote could be a swing vote.”
With over 1.8 million Overseas Filipino voters across the world, it is believed that this would influence the results of this year’s elections. Absentee voting in Qatar is doing very good along with Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Jeddah, according to Consul Musor. He was optimistic the Embassy will achieve its target turnout of 35%. “We predict that there will be surge in the number in the last days of the election,” he said.
The embassy is open every day to receive voters, from 8am to 5pm from Sunday to Thursday and from 9am to 5pm on Friday and Saturday (no lunch break). On May 9-the final day of OAV- voters can cast votes from 7am to 12 noon. The embassy will be open tomorrow, Labour Day which is a holiday in the Philippines to receive voters. It will be closed for consular services on May 8, 9 and 10 to accommodate overseas voting.
The Peninsula
