COMELEC, PALPAK!
Oppose the Return of the Marcoses and Duterte!
May 9, 2022
Migrante Canada stands with the Filipino people abroad and in the Philippines in holding the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) liable for failing to ensure an honest, clean and fair elections. In the Philippines, there have been many reports of multiple malfunctioning vote counting machines (VCMs) and people had to wait for hours to vote. Some did not even have the chance to vote. Before the elections started in the Philippines, there were already cases of fake news, disinformation, vote-buying, red-tagging, harassment and violence. This is the biggest voter disenfranchisement since the Marcos regime and is the result of decades worth of historical revisionism and failing to hold the Marcoses and their cronies accountable.
In Canada, many of our kababayans who are Filipino citizens and dual citizens were not able to register as voters, ballots were mailed late and many were not able to get their ballots due to incorrect addresses. Philippine consulates and embassies did not do their job in providing timely and correct information with their late and lack of voting advisories. Last April, Migrante Canada with other global Migrante chapters and Filipino migrant organizations had a dialogue with COMELEC and urged them to listen to our concerns of disenfranchisement which they denied. These are not isolated incidents but an orchestrated act by those in power to catapult the return of the Marcoses to Malacanang. Let us not forget that it is Duterte himself that appointed COMELEC directors and commissioned Smartmatic, the provider of the VCMs.
Migrante Canada strongly opposes the return of the Marcoses and Duterte! We want to remind everyone of Ferdinand Marcos Sr.’s role in creating the Labor Export Policy (LEP) for overseas Filipino workers. In the next six years under the Marcos-Duterte regime, OFWs will continue to suffer and many more will leave the country to work abroad.
Migrante Canada and many of the other Filipino migrants in Canada will unite in collective actions, alliances and coalitions who will oppose the return of the Marcoses and Duterte in Malacanang. We demand the COMELEC to face us and be transparent about these issues when they had six years to prepare for the national elections and weeks to test their machines.
We encourage our kababayan, our kakampinks, not to lose hope and remain vigilant. Let us continue engaging with our kababayans of our campaign, continue the fight on the streets, and show the strength of our people’s movement!
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