The last thing the country needs
November 10th, 2002
Both houses of Congress have passed an absentee voting bill, which means that Filipinos abroad, or at least some of them, are assured of voting, at least in the elections of 2004.
Twelve provisions in the House and Senate versions, however, are in conflict. How these conflicts are resolved or reconciled if possible will decide a number of issues critical to future Philippine elections.
At least five provisions have to be carefully examined by the technical working group of the conference committee in Congress that’s supposed to reconcile the two versions.
The first of these identifies which overseas Filipinos will vote in the 2004 elections, and possibly after. The Senate bill allows immigrants to vote while the House version allows only those temporarily abroad to do so, among them the country’s 4 million overseas workers.
The second is when Filipinos abroad can vote. The Senate version allows them to vote in 2004 and in succeeding elections. The House version limits their vote to the elections of 2004.
The third is which posts they can vote for. The Senate version allows overseas Filipinos to vote for president, vice president, senator and party-list representatives. The House version allows them to vote only for president and vice president.
The fourth involves provisions to safeguard the integrity of the process, among them the means of registration and confirmation.
The fifth is the representation of Filipino overseas organizations on the special board of canvassers that both House and Senate versions of the bill create.
The first issue is the most critical of all, which I think should be resolved in favor of the House version.
There are at least two categories of Filipinos abroad, excluding the illegals who are not, in any event, likely to vote, or likely to be allowed to do so by any law on absentee voting. These documented Filipinos are the overseas workers and the immigrants.
Immigrants may in turn be divided into two groups—those resident abroad, but who are not citizens of their host countries, and those who are already foreign citizens.
It can safely be said that most overseas workers are unlikely to take up foreign citizenship. The majority are deployed in countries as varied as Singapore, Malaysia, Korea and Japan, as well as in the Middle East. They are domestics and construction workers, nurses and engineers, teachers and accountants. Their families are in the Philippines, which they regularly visit whenever there’s an opportunity or the money for it. These are the Filipinos abroad who have a clear stake in the outcome of elections in the Philippines, and whose loyalty to the country is firmly based on familial ties.
On the other hand, there are the immigrants who have chosen to permanently live abroad, especially in the developed countries of Europe and the United States, as well as in Japan. Some have taken up citizenship in their host countries, especially the United States — for the last 50 years the destination of choice for Filipinos in search of better lives. They do define “better” differently. Some have immigrated to the US simply because they want a share of its prosperity. Some have done so because of the predictability a well-ordered society brings, which they see as crucial to the future of their children. Others have had no loyalty to the Philippines to begin with, and have always regarded it only as a way station to the United States.
Senate President Franklin Drilon has defended the inclusion of immigrants in the Senate version by arguing that Filipino immigrants are still emotionally attached to the country. That may well be true of certain individuals, but it is arguable whether one can say that of Filipino immigrants in general.
One of the characteristics of Filipino immigrants in the United States that immigrant studies find so untypical is that their integration in that society tends to be relatively painless.
Part of the reason is not only Filipino familiarity with the English language but also the fact that Philippine popular culture is heavily American-influenced. Filipinos who immigrate to the United States are more likely to find—unlike, say a Thai immigrant—that America is all they expected it to be, as those expectations have been fed by American songs, movies, books and publications. Living in the Philippines was for them only a period of preparation for life in the United States.
The combination of years of exposure to American culture while they were growing up and living in the Philippines—this exposure was what made the United States their chosen destination, in the first place—plus their relatively painless integration into American society leads to a loyalty to the host country and government some will find fiercer among Filipinos than among other groups.
This loyalty is often reflected in a pro-Establishment, conservative mindset. Filipino immigrants in the US tend to vote Republican and to support the most conservative causes, including far-Right Church groups.
As a rule they’re blindly uncritical of any US administration so long as it’s in power, and will fiercely contest any criticism of its policies and actions. In the debate over Iraq, for example, most will even express incredulity over the skepticism of some Filipino commentators about the motives of the US government. Some even suggest that their being in the US makes their views superior to anyone else’s, especially if that someone is a Filipino in the Philippines.
These “Filipinos” have made their choice. Filipinos to start with, they chose foreign residence and citizenship, with all the demand on their loyalties that that implies. They may still have some attachment to the homeland, especially to friends and relatives, and to balut and adobo. But many Filipino immigrant groups tend to justify their decision to be foreign citizens by disparaging the country and the people they left behind.
These are not the best qualifications for the exercise of a right now reserved only for citizens. Perhaps not too many will be interested in voting in Philippine elections. But those who do are likely to be solidly for whoever and whatever is in power, especially if the latter are supportive of the US government and its policies.
Confronted by a small group of Filipino American students protesting US foreign policy and the Philippine government’s slavish support for it, President Arroyo said in San Francisco recently that 95 percent of Filipinos in the US support her policy of closer ties with the United States anyway. She is likely to be right.
Still, that doesn’t make right giving the vote to holders of green cards waiting to be US citizens or to Filipinos who are already US citizens. Their sheer number—some 3 million—would be enough, if they voted as a bloc, to determine the outcome of elections.
They may not vote as a conscious, organized bloc. But they’re likely to vote as an ideological one—as a group that shares certain assumptions about how this country must be run, with special emphasis on whether this country supports US policies, whatever they may be.
The last thing this country needs is any addition to the shortsighted and uncritical pro-Americanism dominant among the largely uninformed electorate. That segment—and a humongous segment it is—votes on the basis of what it sees, hears and reads in the mass media. If there is one thing that can be safely said of the Philippine mass media, it is that they share and propagate the same ideological biases of their foreign, mostly US, counterparts. What’s worse is that they spread an immobilizing fear of change despite conditions that scream for it.
Allowing Filipino immigrants to vote would thus be a vote for stasis and the status quo—and would be a massive infusion of support for the candidates of this administration in 2004 and beyond. Now we know why the Senate version allows them the vote.
(TODAY, ABS-CBNNEWS.COM, November 9, 2002)