THE LAST-MINUTE withdrawal of the Filipino partner of the Smartmatic consortium, which was awarded the contract for the full automation of the 2010 election, has threatened the collapse of the project, raising the nightmare of falling back to the generations-old manual voting system.

Taking the Commission on Elections and the consortium by complete surprise, Total Information Management Corp. (TIM) told Comelec Chairman Jose Melo that it was pulling out of the project because of ?irreconcilable differences? with its foreign partner.

The pullout threw a spanner on preparations for automation of what is considered the most primitive electoral system among modern democracies. It shocked Melo so much that he threatened to sue TIM criminally and seek civil damages for its action.

What parties or groups stand to benefit from the reversion to the manual method that has been used since the first Philippine election under the American colonial regime in 1907? Was pressure exerted on TIM to withdrew, and if so, by whom? These questions hint at attempts to block the automation of voting and the counting which are supposed to be completed in two days instead of weeks, as has been the case over the past 100 years.

Many Filipinos have held high hopes that automation would help plug opportunities for mass cheating through changing of the results when they are unduly delayed by slow counting. The withdrawal of TIM has heightened concerns that the 2010 election might not be held or that an election marred by fraud might lead to a failure in election, providing an excuse for President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to declare a national emergency which would result in the extension of her term beyond 2010.

These concerns have arisen against the background of determined moves in the administration-controlled House of Representatives to convene Congress as a constituent assembly to consider amendments to the Constitution, with Congress voting as a whole, instead of the House and the Senate voting separately.

What bothers Comelec officials is that the pullout will further delay preparations for the May election.

The Comelec went full steam ahead after it declared the August 2008 automated election in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) a relative success. The ARMM poll automation was an experiment for the 2010 election.

Melo said he was ?very, very satisfied? with the results of the poll in a region with the reputation of being the ?cheating capital? of the Philippines.

Despite sporadic violence and technical glitches, the Comelec declared the computerized voting an ?excellent? exercise. Less than 24 hours after the close of polling stations, the Comelec had received more than half of the results of the automated balloting.

Between 50 and 60 percent of the 1.5 million registered voters cast their votes in 1,901 polling stations equipped with two sets of computers each, where they either blotted circles beside the name of their candidates or touched screens for their selections. The results of the elections for governors, vice governor and 24 members of the regional legislative assembly were announced two days after the polls.

The ARMM experiment results notwithstanding, there remains considerable skepticism over the comprehensive replication of this new technology in a political culture that has tended to seek for ways to find loopholes that would allow cheating in the elections.

Misgivings over whether security safeguards against tampering of the automated system proposed by the Smartmatic consortium were adequate or would work were expressed in Senate hearings last week.

Melo told a Senate hearing last March that the Comelec would rely on the winning bidder to address concerns about security features. This reliance appeared ill-founded. This statement did not reassure a number of senators that the machines which the consortium would supply could not be tampered with.

With the consortium now saddled by questions of whether it has sufficient time to install technical safeguards, the possibility of reverting to the manual method looms large.

It has been pointed out at the Senate hearings that proponents of automation have offered it as a panacea for clean election. It is not. The machines will be fed with returns collected by the Comelec and will be operated by technicians. A quick count system can only deliver results swiftly, but if the inputs are not honest or have been tampered with, the tabulation would not reflect the popular will. Such a system, if tampered with, could only facilitate mass cheating.

In the event of the collapse of the automation project over partnership issues, the inevitable return to the old system will thrust upon the Comelec and the law enforcement authorities it would deputize the responsibility of ensuring free and honest elections.

The entire electorate will also have to make sure that the old system works.

To be sure, there will be cheating. But it will be done crudely and inefficiently. Watchdog groups now exist to thwart cheating in the vote counting from the level of the precincts and municipal, provincial board of canvassers up to the Comelec. These groups include Namfrel and civil society groups.

Cheating in past elections has sent the masses to the streets. Election watchdogs reported and exposed cheating by the Marcos regime in the 1985 snap election. The cheating stripped the Marcos dictatorship of its international and domestic legitimacy.

The roof will not crash on us if the automation plan is aborted. When the manual system was subverted in 1986, a people?s revolution exploded and overthrew a dictatorship. Let?s do it once again.