The Philippine Online Chronicles

Members of Teachers’ Dignity Coalition (TDC) said Sunday that they will boycott poll duties for the May 2010 election unless the Commission on Elections (Comelec) arranges a smoother way for them to vote, gmanews.tv reports.

The TDC, which represents 25,000 teachers, appealed to the Comelec to prevent thousands of teachers from being disenfranchised by allowing the reactivation of deactivated teachers, the transfer of registration of those not registered in the district where they work, and a special registration for teachers who are not registered.

“The Comelec is pushing us to this drastic measure because they continue to ignore our demands and would not make a decision as early as now,” TDC national chairperson Benjo Basas said in Filipino on Saturday.

Teachers serve as board election inspectors (BEIs) during elections, and the March 16 Comelec Resolution 8798 ammended Section 12 of Resolution 8786 extending the voting time for BEIs from 20 to 30 minutes. The resolution was in response to an appeal by the TDC.

“The 10-minute extension to facilitate our voting would be useless if in the first place, teachers could not be allowed to participate as BEI or even as voters,” he said.

Basas said the time limit imposed by Comelec has prevented many teachers from voting, has led to them being delisted from the voting list, and disqualified 80 percent of teachers from becoming members of the BEI.

Voters who are unable to vote in two consecutive national elections are automatically delisted from the voting list.

Basas also said past Comelec resolutions allowed teachers to vote in precincts where they are assigned but claims the votes were not registered which has disenfranchised many teachers, he said.

“In the 2007 local and national elections, the Comelec allowed and actually compelled all the teachers, regardless of their registration, to serve as members of the BEI and were allowed to vote. Now, the Comelec seems to be strictly implementing the law, perhaps because they do not need many teachers as they did in the past elections.” he said.