MANILA, April 10, 2013—Despite calls from some sectors for partisan poll watchers to take a leave from poll watching duties, the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) stressed there is no shortage of volunteers.
PPCRV Chair Henrietta de Villa said that volunteers applying for leave can be replaced by other volunteers who remain non-partisan.
“Most of the volunteers are young people. Currently, we are having a clean, honest, accurate, meaningful and peaceful (CHAMP) voter’s education campaign in campuses around the National Capital Region (NCR). With this, we are also hoping that they can help us by being volunteers,” de Villa said.
De Villa explained that some volunteers already been helping the PPCRV in previous elections and they still remain as such.
“Not all of them are new volunteers. Like in some parishes, if the parish priest will not organize a team of volunteers or his parish will take a leave from PPCRV, there are still people in that specific parish who remain as volunteers. And then we also find new volunteers to augment the lacking number of volunteers,” de Villa added.
Other help
The PPCRV head pointed out they are receiving help from other religion, Christian denominations and civic organizations.
“I’ll give you an example, in Tarlac, to add the lacking numbers of poll watchers, they take in members of the United Methodist Church and members of some civic society groups there to increase the number of volunteers in certain areas,” she emphasized.
De Villa furthered by clarifying that PPCRV work is voluntary, they are not forcing anybody to be volunteers and anybody can leave PPCRV anytime if they wish to do some other works. (Jandel Posion)
