Foreign Affairs Secretary Ople said that, in cooperation with the COMELEC, the Department and its foreign service posts continue to exert every effort to encourage overseas Filipinos to register to enable them to vote in Philippine elections.

“We have stepped up our information drive and continue to do so.  As a result, registration figures for last weekend doubled compared to the first weekend of voter registration,” the Secretary said.  “We have also established more satellite centers in Japan,” the Secretary added.

Secretary Ople stated that “while the first weekend of August 2 to 3 saw some 3,714 Filipinos register as overseas voters, we had 6,438 overseas Filipinos register during the last weekend of August 9 and 10.  This is a very encouraging development and we expect this upward trend to continue as Posts further mobilize all their registration campaign efforts.”

The Secretary mentioned that in the particular case of Brunei Darussalam, local Filipinos have been attracted to the Philippine Embassy’s Kabayanihan information dissemination program, involving personal visits by Embassy staffers to major establishments such as schools, department stores, garment factories and other similar places to talk to Filipinos about the OAVA.   The Embassy has also tapped the assistance of local radio companies and newspapers to help publicize this registration process.

The Secretary also said that on 10 August the Philippine Embassy in Tokyo rendered consular outreach services and absentee voting registration in Yamato City, Kanagawa Prefecture, upon the invitation of the Kabayan Yamato Filipino Community headed by Linda Aiza Cano.

The Secretary also said that the Philippine Embassy in Tokyo will offer consular outreach and absentee voting registration services in behalf of the Filipino community members residing in the suburbs of Tokyo on the following dates:

31 August 2003 (Sunday), from 10 am to 6 pm, in Tsukuba City, Ibaraki Prefecture, at the Ibaraki Christian Center, Friends Multi-purpose Hall, Kawada Bldg, Amakubo (Contact person : Benny Tutor, Jr. of the Ibaraki Christian Center);

14 September 2003 (Sunday), from 10 am to 6 pm, in Urawa, Saitama City, Saitama Prefecture, at the Open House of the Urawa Catholic Church (Contact person: Fr. Jack Serate of the Saitama Diocese Filipino Community); and,

21 September 2003 (Sunday), from 10 am to 6 pm, in Ichihara City, Chiba Prefecture, at the 9th Flr of the Sun Plaza Ichihara (near the Goi JR Station) (Contact person: Frank Ocampos, Jr).

As a result of these efforts, the Embassy reports that after 11 days of registration, they have succeeded in registering nearly 10% of all potential Filipino voters in Brunei, with the pace of registration increasing in recent days.

“I am confident that with the information campaign measures being undertaken by all our foreign service establishments around the world, the Department will reach all those overseas Filipinos who have long wished to participate in this historic process, and we will succeed in registering them as absentee voters by the end of the September 30 registration deadline,“ declared Secretary Ople.