Manila: The Philippines is in the thick of preparations for the country's absentee vote with more than half-a-million Filipinos expected to take part in the political exercise that will elect the country's next national leaders.

According to Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) Undersecretary Rafael E. Seguis, the DFA Overseas Absentee Voting Secretariat and the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) Committee on Overseas Absentee Voting, are gearing up for May 2010 elections by providing training to key personnel.

The DFA and Comelec representatives will be in Abu Dhabi and Riyadh on March 18-20 to conduct training on Personal Voting for Electoral Boards of Posts in the Middle East and Africa and in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, respectively.

Seguis, who also heads the DFA-Overseas Absentee Voting Secretariat, said over 100 personnel and officials of the foreign service, are undergoing a three-day training starting February 24.

The training will be attended by over 200 foreign service personnel, more than half of whom will be coming from Saudi Arabia.

The Comelec Committee on Overseas Absentee Voting Secretariat said that of the hundreds of thousands who had signed up to take part in the absentee vote, 589,000 were certified for the May 2010 elections by the Comelec's Resident Election Registration Board.

The voting will start from April 10 to May 10 and will be conducted at the Philippine Consulates and Embassies.

Unlike voting in the home country where they can also elect local and party-list officials, overseas absentee voters can only elect their president, vice-president and 12 senators.

A separate training for the automated election system (AES) in Hong Kong and Singapore will take place in the first week of April 2010.

This election will be the first conducted using the AES, an advanced system of voting where results on the poll will be known in hours instead of days or even weeks, in past Philippine votes.

The 2010 vote will be the third time that Filipinos abroad will be taking part in elections at home as absentee voters.