For elderly in Makati, voting can be tedious but ‘worth it’

Some elderly citizens in Makati voting at the San Antonio National High School gripe about their hardship in casting their votes including climbing several flights of stairs on Monday, May 13, 2013. Video by Cathy Miranda/INQUIRER.net

MANILA, Philippines — With several flights of stairs between them and their polling precincts, some elderly Makati citizens and their companions could not help but be rankled by the voting process in San Antonio village on Monday.

“This is our first time to vote in Makati. It may be the last,” a companion of an elderly woman who refused to be named told INQUIRER.net.

But for some, like 60-year-old Virgilio Garcia and his wife Carmencita, 61, said that voting was “worth it. Anyway, we only vote what, every three years?”

The Garcias are staunch Binay supporters and maintained that even if they had to go up several flights of stairs every elections, they would “to vote for the Binays.”

At the end of the interview however, the Garcias joked that they still had to catch their breath before heading downstairs after voting.

The San Antonio National High School is where Vice President Jejomar Binay and his family are set to vote at 10 a.m.

Divinelinda dela Cruz, elections supervisor, said that senior citizens and persons with disabilities (PWD) should have a companion with them to help them vote.

An area at the ground floor was set up for the elderly and the disabled, she said. This will be monitored by a poll watcher and a board of elections inspector (BEI).

But while several senior citizens were in fact assisted in casting their votes by an officer, initially, there was neither poll watcher nor BEI in sight.

Dorothy Celis, who accompanied her mother, 69-year-old Norma Celis vote expressed worry whether the ballot they filled up was brought to the appropriate precinct and fed into a PCOS machine.

“The person who assisted us said he would take the ballot upstairs. He said he would just come back to apply indelible ink. It slipped my mind that I had to accompany him when he submits my mother’s ballot,” she said.

“I don’t know where it ended up. There was no watcher and we don’t know how many senior citizens have cast their votes,” she added.

The officer who volunteered to bring Celis’ ballot to the polling precinct was Mark Castillanes.

When asked why he did not ask Dorothy to accompany him when he filed the senior citizen’s ballot, he said that it was up to the companion whether they still wanted to be present when the ballot was fed into the PCOS machine.

Minutes later, a poll watcher did start checking on how the senior citizens and disabled voters were doing.

Dela Cruz maintained that much of the senior citizen voters had no complaints.

“We have asked that senior citizens and the disabled to have a companion to assist them in voting. The companions will be the ones who will feed the ballots to the (PCOS) machines,” she said.

When asked why they cannot simply put up a special polling precinct for senior citizens and persons with disabilities, she said “we can’t put PCOS machines at the ground floor, they (the voters) will be disturbed.”

Some schools were selected to have such special precincts but San Antonio High School was not one of them, she said.

“We weren’t selected to have PWD precincts,” said Dela Cruz.