MANILA — THEY lobbied hard for a law to allow Filipinos overseas to vote; some are drumming up the need to register before the registration deadline in August ends.

But with constitutionalists’ move to cancel the 2007 elections, absentee voting advocates say they can’t help but feel betrayed.

“What a sad Christmas message this [was] for [overseas Filipino workers],” absentee voting campaigner Ofelia Mananquil-Bakker said in her email message to an online group.

MANILA — A SPOKESPERSON for ship-owners is lobbying against increases in the wages of Filipino seafarers, citing his compatriots’ sense of “moral responsibility”.

Carlos Salinas, chair and president of the Filipino Ship-owners’ Association, claims that to cease raising wage rates would be in the “best interest” of Filipinos.

MANILA — IN the run-up to the centennial of overseas Filipino labor migration to Hawaii, a former International Labor Organization official wondered why the Philippines still remains underdeveloped.

Manolo Abella, formerly a top-ranking official of ILO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, expressed this insight when asked to react on Labor Secretary Patricia Sto. Tomas’s view that labor migration is an “explicit” development strategy of the government.

PASAY CITY — HE avoids alcohol and doesn’t smoke, so former migrant worker Miguel Bolos spent millions of pesos on his sole vice: the Bay Spa.

I never imagined myself as the owner of this spa, said Bolos –”call me ‘Mike’, please”– who, at first, thought the prospect of being one was too far-fetched. Hence, he immediately snatched the opportunity to become a businessman when the option arrived on his doorsteps this year.