The overseas absentee voting in Jeddah breezed through without glicthes at the Phillippine Consulate General with voters trickling in individually and in groups starting at 8 A.M. Saturday, an official and witnesses said. The Philippines is holding its first automated election across the archipelago of more than 7,000 islands this year but overseas absentee is being done manually, officials said. “It's going on smoothly since 8 A.M.,” said a junior official at the Philippine Consualte General in Jeddah in a telephone interview. He declined to be named because “only top officials” are authorized to give press statement. All the senior officials were busy at the ground floor of the consulate where the voting was being held, he said. He said the voting was done manually at the consulate's 10 precincts. “As far as I know, except in Hong Kong, overseas voting (for this year's election) is being done manually,” he said. “Definitely, in all countries in the Middle East, it is still manual voting.” He said about 100 voters have turned up at the consulate general up to the time of the interview at 2 P.M. “There is an average of about 10 voters in every precinct. We have 10 precincts. Some Filipinos who went there to transact other businesses like renewal of passports said they did not know that the balloting has started but they cast their votes jusst the same because “we are already here anyway.” Many of the voters came individually but some came in droves. Employees of Al-Tayal company, a maker of plastics containers, came in at least one bus. They said the company has hired buses to ferry employees from their site at Kilometer 14. The Philippines is holding its first automated voting on May 10 to elect a new president, vice president, 12 sets of new senators, new members of the House of Representatives and party-list or sectoral representatives. Filipinos working or living in other countries are allowed to vote in overseas absentee voting in Philippine missions in their host countries. This year's absentee voting started Saturday and will end on May 9. On Friday, Riyadh-based Ambassador Antonio Villamor called on Filipino voters in the Kingdom to cast their votes to choose new officials to lead the country . “Please go out and vote, don't waste the chance to choose the right leader,” Villamor, who holds office at the Philippine embassy in Riyadh, was quoted by GMANews.TV as saying. More than 500,000 overseas Filipinos are in the list of absentee voters for this year, including more than 100,000 in Saudi Arabia - 52,887 in Riyadh, 36,053 in Jeddah and 21,537 in Al
