Duterte obtained 33 percent voter preference, according to the Pulse Asia poll taken from April 19 to 24, down from 34 percent in its April 12-17 survey. File photo
MANILA, Philippines – More Filipinos abroad cast their votes for the 2016 polls, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said yesterday.
As of noon yesterday, 406,780 had voted during the 30-day overseas voting, representing 29.56 percent, the DFA Overseas Voting Secretariat said.
In Asia-Pacific, 158,250 Filipinos had voted, 72,021 in the Americas and 42,494 Filipinos in Europe, according to the DFA Overseas Voting Secretariat.
In the 2010 elections, the voter turnout was 24.86 percent (146,650) and 15.20 percent in the 2013 elections (112,110).
The law-mandated, month-long overseas absentee voting opened last April 9 in 85 Philippine posts worldwide.
Figures from the Commission on Elections showed a total of 1,376,067 overseas Filipinos registered worldwide for the 2016 polls.
Garry Martines of Migrante urged yesterday Filipinos abroad to stay vigilant and ensure that their votes will be counted.
He said close to 400,000 Filipinos were able to cast their votes for the national elections.
A total of 376,586 overseas voters participated in overseas absentee voting (OAV) or a rise of 285 percent compared to the 2013 polls, he said, citing data from the DFA.
“The number of OAV voters is still expected to rise as Filipinos continue to troop to polling centers until the last day of voting yesterday,” he said.
Martinez said the high turnout of overseas voters is testament to how Filipinos, wherever they are in the world, thirst for genuine change.
“They want a new government. They want a new leadership that is not corrupt and cacique,” he said.
“They want accountability. They want new leaders who will be nurturing to OFWs and migrant workers and their families back home.”
Martinez said Filipino communities worldwide have persevered and overcame the various setbacks and obstacles that would have otherwise discouraged them to vote.
“Our OFWs have remained vigilant,” he said. “We have once again proven how resilient and significant our OFWs are. We have disproved all claims that there had been a growing apathy among our OAVs.”
Political Paradigm of Pragmatism from the Khmer Youth part 61
This part (61), Mr. Sophan Seng analysed on the “Cambodian voters from overseas” that are differentiated by their resettlement mandate.
For those who are living in foreign countries permanently such as Cambodia diaspora members in the United States, Canada, France, Australia, and many other parts of the world, they should be facilitated to vote in Cambodia elections. There are approximately 500,000 or half million Cambodians overseas among those diaspora who have hugely contributed for nation-building of Cambodia.
Cambodian citizens who are temporarily living oversea are migrant workers, students, soldiers stationing in South Africa, and government officials. There are approximately 100,000,0 or 1 million Cambodian temporary living abroad. Those people are entitled to vote in all Cambodia elections.
On behalf of a Cambodian oversea, I am disappointed by Hun Manet who was interviewed by VOA Khmer recently about the rights to vote of Cambodians overseas.
His father and Hun Manet seems have no political will to facilitate easy access for Cambodians overseas to exercise their rights to vote. He and his father have the same reason to not allow Cambodians overseas to vote as those reasons are typical technical issues. If we are going to discuss technical issues, we could learn from Myanmar, Thailand and the Philippines, or we can establish our own mechanism.
Intention to obstruct Cambodians overseas to vote in Cambodia elections is a violation over Cambodia Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations in which Cambodia is a covenant.
On the 16th anniversary of its adoption, observers reopen a debate on the founding document’s legacy
KEY PROVISIONS IN THE 1993 CAMBODIAN CONSTITUTION:
Article 7: The King shall reign, but shall not govern.
Article 31: The Kingdom of Cambodia shall recognise and respect human rights as stipulated in the United Nations charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the covenants and conventions related to human rights, women’s and children’s rights.
Article 41: Khmer citizens shall have freedom of expression, press, publication and assembly. No one shall exercise this right to infringe upon the rights of others, to affect the good traditions of the society, to violate public law and order and national security.
Article 44: The right to confiscate possessions from any person shall be exercised only in the public interest.
Article 51: The legislative, executive and judicial powers shall be separated.
Article 80: No [National] Assembly member shall be prosecuted, detained or arrested because of opinions expressed during the exercise of his or her duties.
Article 132: Revision or amendments shall be enacted by a constitutional law passed by the Assembly with a two-thirds majority vote.
AS the Kingdom marks the 16th birthday of its Constitution, adopted with much fanfare on this day in 1993, observers remain divided on the elusive document, opening a debate on whether it stands as a symbol of Cambodia’s emergence from years of war and conflict or a sign of squandered opportunities.
Cambodia’s founding fathers – a motley mix of lapsed Marxists, royalists, nationalist resistance fighters and foreign consultants – spent more than a year drafting a new Constitution together from the Kingdom’s 1947 Constitution and human rights stipulations contained in the October 1991 Paris Peace Agreements.
The Constitution that came into force on September 24, 1993, was a watershed in Cambodian history, containing a separation of powers (Article 51), adherence to international human rights treaties (Article 31) and a series of provisions respecting basic civil rights (Articles 32 to 50).
Coming at the tail end of the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) and just four months after Cambodia’s first multi-party elections in decades, the Constitution arrived at an important crossroads in the country’s history. But some say the story of the document since 1993 has largely been one of form over substance.
“We have a sophisticated set of documents, but documents are only papers. The facade is there, but there is no democratic substance,” opposition leader Sam Rainsy told the Post.
Political Paradigm of Pragmatism from the Khmer Youth 59
This part (59), Mr. Sophan Seng analysed on the recent public statement and press conference by Comfrel or The committee for free and fair elections in Cambodia. According to the press conference, Mr. Michael who is one of the advisory board members stressed that the ongoing practices of authoritarian countries which have used election as a pretext to renew their power, and Mr. Pannha who is director placed doubts on state’s inference with current national election committee (NEC).
Mr. Sophan highly agreed with Michael that through academic researches and real world politiks, many authoritarian countries are conducting elections to legitimize their power. Often, those countries including Cambodia under PM Hun Sen leadership, they have always attempted to threat and intimidate the voters through using public speech on both explicit and implicit threatening. More than that, they have always used judiciary system to favor their political agenda.
For what Mr. Pannha said, Mr. Sophan observed that NEC that was created by 4 members from each political parties are not in equilibrium of power because 4 members from government-led party CPP could enjoy the free ride of both conducting daily business without intimidation and fear of political reprisal at all. For 4 members from opposition party, CNRP, they are mindful in all movements and they are easily been feared, distracted, and faced political reprisal in all time. The bad working environment for 4 members from opposition party is also significantly caused by the ongoing biased court of Cambodia.
At the end, the lacking of political will of Hun Sen leadership to include Cambodians overseas to vote, is another attempt showing that election is just a mean for his long term grip in power in Cambodia.
There are many hurdles to be cleared before online voting can be used – and trusted – for a general election. As Bercow said in January: “We cannot be under any illusion this would be easy to achieve. The fact electronic voting is incredibly rare across the globe I believe is testament to some of the problems delivering it.”
Estonia has been the most proactive in its adoption of online voting, which was first used nationally in its 2007 general election. Only 3.4% of the population used it then, but by the time of the 2015 parliamentary elections just over 30% voted online.
However, an independent report into how the system works found “alarming” technological problems and “staggering gaps in procedural and operational security…the architecture of the system leaves it open to cyber-attacks from foreign powers, such as Russia.”
Shocking
In 2013, an international team of independent experts in electronic voting and computer security were gathered to examine the Estonian system. Jason Kitcat of the Open Rights Group said: “I was shocked at what I found. Processes and procedures changed on a daily basis; attempts to hide errors. CDs were being loaded into this system with no apparent audit trails, they were just being pulled in and out of backpacks.”
The Estonian system was then recreated using the same source code to work out what attacks on both the system’s servers and voters’ home computers could be possible. Malware built by the team of IT researchers beat all safeguards used to supposedly make voting safe. The malware was able to override the citizen’s actions and vote for a different candidate. Next, the team successfully installed undiscoverable malware on the servers used to count votes and changed which party received the most.
“We never thought we would see as many problems and vulnerabilities as we did and we felt duty bound to make the public aware of those problems”, Kitcat added.
