With only 15 per cent of the 737,759 registered Filipino voters abroad having cast their ballots in the recently concluded midterm elections, how did the ruling administration spend the 148.4 million pesos (Dh13.1 million) allotted for overseas absentee voting?
 
This is what Senator Franklin Drilon, chair of the Senate committee on finance, would want to know, saying on Thursday he will file the appropriate resolution for a review of the Overseas Absentee Voting (OAV) Act as soon as the 16th Congress convenes in July.
 
Drilon, who shepherded the 2.06-trillion-peso (Dh181.874 billion) national budget for 2013 in the Senate, said 105.038 million pesos (Dh9.27 million) was allocated to the Commission on Elections (Comelec) while another 43.41 million pesos (Dh3.83 million) was set aside for OAV.
 
Citing estimates made by his staff, Drilon said government spent only 1,300 pesos (Dh114.78) for every 113,209 overseas Filipino who had cast his or her vote within a month of polling held abroad in advance of the May 13 elections in the Philippines.
 
“This is outrageous,” Drilon said in a statement released earlier, in line with a representation he had made before officials of the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA), to increase the participation of Filipinos in absentee voting this year, owing to government’s tight fiscal position. “I wonder how the Comelec and the DFA can justify these numbers.”
 
At the weekly news forum at the Senate on Thursday, he revealed: “I am getting initial reports about the inefficiencies, particularly in the addresses indicated in the voters’ list, and therefore the voting by mail has not been effective and has resulted in just about 15 per cent of the registered voters casting their ballots…”
 
He said he would particularly ask the Comelec and the DFA, through Senate deliberations on either the budget or electoral reforms, how they spent the budget.