Migrante: Is this what we get for supporting overseas absentee voters’ registration?

The non-government group Migrante on Tuesday criticized the Commission on Elections (Comelec) for encouraging overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) to register and vote in 2010, but denying them possible representation in Congress when the poll body revoked Migrante’s party-list accreditation.

While picketing the Comelec office in Intramuros, Migrante reminded the poll body how it tapped their group, through its chapters in 23 countries, to help in the information drive about the registration for the overseas absentee voting for 2010, from February 1 to August 31.

Gary Martinez, Migrante international chairman, said the least that the Comelec could do was to give their group due process before deciding its case.

Migrante was one of the 26 groups delisted on October 13. The Comelec took back Migrante’s party-list accreditation after “failing to participate in the last two preceding elections or failing to obtain at least two percent of the votes cast under the party-list system in the two preceding elections for the constituency in which it has registered,” according to the Republic Act 7941.

Martinez said Migrante does not fall under any parts of that provision. He explained that they failed to get 2% of votes only in 2004. The following elections, in 2007, they intentionally did not participate. Therefore, they did not lose twice nor failed to join the elections twice.

The Comelec, for its part, sticks to the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the provision. Quoting the tribunal’s decision delisting the Minero party-list in 2007, Commissioner Gregorio Larazzabal said that “non participation in the election means failure to get 2% of votes.”

Connie Bragas-Regalado, Migrante chairperson, said in a press release that the Comelec’s act is a “conscious effort to marginalize the already marginalized sectors in our society.”

“Not only did Comelec denied Migrante its right to due process; it has, in essence, deprived the over ten million overseas Filipinos and their families of their much deserved right to genuine sectoral representation,” she said.

The group plans to file a petition to the Supreme Court on November 19, a day before the start of the official filing of certificate of candidacies. (Newsbreak)