MANILA - The Commission on Elections on Thursday belied the allegations of a migrant group that it had been slow in approving applications for overseas absentee voters’ registration.

The poll body was referring to the stated issued by Migrante International that the COMELEC Resident Election Registration Board (RERB) met only twice this year and has only approved 17,000 applications for OAV registration.

“The COMELEC’s RERB have conducted five (5) hearings already; and contrary to the claims of Migrante, the RERB have acted upon 115,831 applications for OAV registration,” said COMELEC spokesman James Jimenez.

Jimenez defended the RERB as saying that it had been meeting every month since April and that it will continue hearing OAV applications until October 2009.

He added that of the total number of applications heard by the RERB only 4,302 OAV applications for registration were disapproved.  

He said one of the reasons why OAV applications of Filipino immigrants are disapproved is the applicant’s refusal or failure to execute an affidavit to return to the country, three years after exercising his right to vote in absentia.  

Jimenez said that as of August 26, 2009, a total of 201,328 have applied for OAV registration worldwide. The United States of America (USA) has the most number of OAV registrants, with 29,595; followed by China with 21,204 and United Arab Emirates (UAE) with 15,164.