On Friday, Jan. 22, after years of studiously ignoring them, members of Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines were invited to have dinner with President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. One correspondent, Raissa Robles, asked the President if she was personally concerned over the coming elections. The President looked at the ceiling, then, as if thinking aloud, said, ?I?m worried. I?m worried, but I ... I have to go by what the Comelec said.?

The President in her subsequent musings on the subject set aside the possibility of a total failure of elections (the Comelec, according to her, ?said it?s not going to happen, so we take their word for it?) but conceded the polls might fail in some areas.

These presidential musings, coming on the heels of the Comelec itself telling legislators that 30 percent of the precincts might experience problems with automation (affecting, by one estimate, up to 14.4 million voters), become pregnant with meaning when other glitches in the ongoing trials of the equipment (involving the sensitivity, or lack of it, of machines to the shading of ovals, the rejection of wrinkled ballots, and transmission problems) are factored in. There is too much of an eerie coincidence between the Comelec saying up to 30 percent of the precincts might experience automation problems and Prospero Pichay?s drumbeating that the administration machinery can ?deliver? 30 percent of the votes to its candidates.

Up until recently, the gap between the two leading contenders for the presidency was so wide that even if any side had wanted to cheat, it would have been impossible. However the recent surveys indicate the gap is narrowing and could narrow further, making the presidential campaign, which formally kicks off on Feb. 9, truly a neck-and-neck race all the way down the wire.

This isn?t just about the contest becoming a truly exciting one for observers. It means that the challenge for the electoral system to function has exponentially increased at a time when the Comelec is burdened with one of the biggest logistical challenges in Philippine history on one hand, and the usual suspects involved in massaging the votes are salivating over becoming increasingly relevant again in a close race on the other.

In 1998, dagdag-bawas (vote-padding and -shaving) operators were saddled with what turned out to be the insurmountable problem of a front-runner with a commanding 2-1 lead over his leading rival. In 2004 we saw how a political exercise in which the two leading contenders were engaged in a close race saddled the official winner with a crisis of legitimacy. All the innovations put in place for 2010 are supposed to eliminate the risks of the country being saddled with a protracted crisis of legitimacy again.

Now comes the revelation from Comelec officials themselves that they have detected the importation of 5,000 jamming devices that could derail the electronic transmission of precinct results and the counting of those results. The Comelec said the jamming equipment arrived in bulk, making the importation ?noticeable,? but it kept the identity of the importer close to its chest. We would have preferred that the Comelec revealed who the importer was, and let the importer explain why cell-phone jammers were imported in bulk.

Instead, what we have is an alarming suspicion publicly voiced by the Comelec, which then insists that speed should be of the essence in transmitting results. As it is, the National Computer Center sent all the wrong signals by proposing a three-hour shutdown of the Internet and cell phones, supposedly to facilitate the unhampered transmission of vote results. The problem with this trial balloon is that the less alarming and sensible solution, which is to ensure dedicated bandwidth and cell signal for transmission purposes, became the secondary and not primary proposal.

It is not just transmission itself in a speedy and unhampered manner that is of the essence, but public scrutiny as well. The media, political parties, electoral watchdog groups and the public should be able to monitor the voting and the counting, so as to validate the process and report any anomalies that might occur. Only in this manner can we hope to have an election that is credible to all concerned.