Filipinos in UAE to vote online as polls open today

Philippine Ambassador to the UAE Alfonso Ferdinand Ver has repeated his call for the 189,892 registered Filipino voters across the seven emirates, to enrol over the Philippines’ Commission on Elections (Comelec) overseas voting portal ov.comelec.gov.ph, so their favoured senatorial and party-list representative candidates, have the chance to be part of the national legislative bodies for the crafting and enactment of laws towards nationhood, beginning July 2025.

Ver made the reiteration on Saturday morning when he oversaw the Final Lockdown and Sealing (FLS) of the landmark Comelec Online Overseas Voting and Overseas Counting System (OV/OCS), the Comelec-designated Special Board of Election Inspectors (SBEIs) at the Philippine Embassy-Abu Dhabi, conducted.

“We are not campaigning for any candidate. We are campaigning for your active participation at this online voting, the first in the history of Philippine Elections, with 189,892 Filipinos in the UAE, the largest out of the 1,241,690 registered voters worldwide,” said Ver, viewed by followers of the Philippine Embassy-Abu Dhabi Facebook Page.

The top diplomat made the appeal as he mentioned as well that of the 1,241,690, only 48,000 had registered, since the voting enrolment portal was also opened for the test vote on March 20.

He cited the GMA-7 Online news that quoted on Friday, Comelec chairman George Garcia from Manila, adding that of the 48,000, 15 per cent or 7,200 were from the UAE.

For the Doubting Thomases on the authenticity and security features of the OV -- a project of the Comelec with the Philippines’ Department of Science and Technology and the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) Ver said, “Let us all enrol and make our voices count. Let us put our faith and trust in our country’s electoral process which made possible so that Filipinos from all over the world have the chance to be heard.”

On Friday afternoon and over at the Philippine Consulate General, responsible for the 123,891 certified Filipino voters in Dubai, Sharjah, Ajman, Umm Al Quwain, Ras Al Khaimah, and Fujairah, Consul General Marford Angeles said, “Let us enrol until May 7. Let us cast our vote beginning April 13. Filipinos are known to spend time with their mobile phones and devices, please take this opportunity given us to cast our vote easily.” According to the “Digital 2025: Nearly Two-Thirds of Southeast Asia’s Population Are on Social Media,” published in the tnglobal website, “Filipinos spend an average of eight hours and 52 minutes a day on the Internet – maintaining its rank as being significantly ahead of the global average of six hours and 38 minutes. Most of this time on the Internet is spent on their mobile phones at five hours 21 minutes, which is also significantly ahead of the global average of three hours and 46 minutes.”

The consular mission in Dubai has its own set of Comelec-designated SBEIs which completed the FLS on Friday. They received from the Comelec-designated Special Ballot Reception and Custody Group, a Comelec-issued two dashboard/administration laptops and printer, and voting kiosk (also a laptop for onsite voting when registered voters encounter enrolment and casting issues; also for the illiterate, senior citizens, people of determination and the pregnant). Led by Ver, the Comelec-designated DFA personnel in the UAE participated at the 14-country Middle East and Africa Feb.24 to 26 OV/OCS training in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

The FLS was conducted on or before April 12 in all the 77 Comelec-designated OV diplomatic and consular posts worldwide to make sure that the OCS is empty before April 13.

Test votes have been encouraged even in the first manual overseas absentee voting in 2003.

The activity has been part and parcel of the ecosystem to preserve the sanctity of the ballot.

From the March 20 Philippine Embassy-Abu Dhabi/Philippine Consulate General-Dubai Joint Online Voting Community Briefing, Comelec-Online Voting director Atty Ian Michael Geonaga pointed out that all votes cast are “encrypted and these are only seen by the voter himself.”

Geonaga however cautioned that even as OV is adopted, any form of electioneering or coercion done on anyone in the act of casting a vote is still punishable by law: “Still, be vigilant and please report any to us.”

From the hybrid community briefing, Geonaga mentioned that he saw the necessity to go online voting when he visited the UAE during the 2022 presidential elections and saw the crowd of voters at the Philippine Embassy and Philippine Consulate General.