The Commission on Elections (Comelec) and the Office of the Secretary for Overseas Voting (DFA-OVS) held the sixth meeting of the information campaign on internet voting in partnership with the Philippine Consulate in Abu Dhabi. This is the first attempt at internet voting in the country's history, which will be implemented in the upcoming parliamentary elections next year. The two-day event, which took place on October 25-26, served as a pilot training for the region of the Middle East and Africa. "Presenting them with the right to vote through a more modern voting system, we are further promoting the most concrete and convincing recognition of their input and influence on shaping not only our upcoming selection of leaders and management in the next three years but also our concurrent aspirations for nation-building," said one of the employees. If we compare the number of Filipinos living abroad—over 12 million—and the last elections only had about 600 thousand voters. We hope that with internet voting, it will become a norm for us," noted the DFA representative. "We are applying maximum efforts to ensure the integrity of our voting process, starting from the verification of identity and ending with the transmission process and so on." On the first day of training, representatives from nine Philippine missions participated, including Abu Dhabi and Dubai (UAE), Er-Riyadh and Jeddah (Saudi Arabia), Damascus (Syria), Tel Aviv (Israel), Tripoli (Libya), Rabat (Morocco), and Abidjan (Ivory Coast). In addition to this, more than 50 leaders of the Filipino community and organizations based in Abu Dhabi participated on the second day of training. "This will be the largest change in strengthening our overseas Filipinos since the start of overseas voting in 2004," said the Philippine consul in the UAE. We are confident that the process of internet voting will be very secure," he added, noting that the next training and information campaign for internet voting will take place in two weeks in Vancouver, Canada, for North America. "We learned a lot over the years and will implement the corresponding improvements," he concluded.
