Saturday, February 24, 2007
C-Cimpel needs more volunteers
THE Cebu-Citizens’ Involvement and Maturation in People’s Empowerment and Liberation (C-Cimpel) hopes to gather more than 19,000 volunteers for the May 14 elections.
In the 2004 elections, C-Cimpel was able to get about 10,000 volunteers who served as poll watchers in 10,124 precincts. The rest of the about 9,000 volunteers manned various voters’ assistance centers, task forces and mobile monitoring groups.
C-Cimpel’s task as an election watchdog covers the voting, counting, and canvassing phases of the election, even escorting the official provincial certificates of canvas (COC) to the House of Representatives in Manila.
Dottie Maglasang of C-Cimpel said they hope to recruit more than 19,000 volunteers to cover all the precincts.
The volunteers will come from the academe, non-government organizations, civic clubs, lay-mandated organizations and movements, religious, C-Cimpel parish chapters, and civil society.
In the past elections, Philippine Institute of Certified Public Accountants (Picpa) volunteered to supervise the verification, validation and tabulation of the election returns.
“One requirement for the volunteer is that he stays non-partisan starting February up to June 2007,” Marilu Chiongbian, executive director of C-Cimpel, said in a letter.
Link
Cebu Archbishop Cardinal Vidal invited all organizations to link up with C-Cimpel and volunteer as trainors for the voters’ values formation (VVF) seminars, poll watchers, and other tasks.
“We cannot leave to the politicians alone the state of our political life and nation,” Chiongbian said.
A core group from C-Cimpel conducts regular VVF seminars.
Topics include a political situationer of the country, urgent issues that need immediate attention, a brief review of Charter Change, the role of civil society in governance, and the duties and responsibilities of the congressmen, and other political leaders. (NRC)
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (February 24, 2007 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
Join the Sun.Star message board.Click here. |
