MANILA, Philippines—The influential Makati Business Club (MBC) said Wednesday it was “deeply disturbed” by the breakup of the consortium that won the bidding for computerized balloting.

In a statement, the MBC said that the withdrawal of Total Information Management Corp. (TIM) from its partnership with Smartmatic International placed “the fate of the critical 2010 elections under a cloud of uncertainty.”

“Rather than comment further on this development, we would like to study all options still available under the current law and under the new time constraints, including the possibility of combining manual voting and counting with automated transmission and consolidation of the election results,” it said.

The Computer Professionals’ Union (CPU), which has criticized Comelec’s “hasty implementation” of the poll automation project, said Smartmatic should not be allowed to participate in the elections in any way.

Technically incapable

“As it stands, if the current Comelec itself tries to implement the automated elections with Smartmatic, it would be nothing short of selling out the 2010 elections to foreigners,” CPU national coordinator Rick Bahague said in a statement.

“As Comelec is unprepared and technically incapable to do the automation, it will be blindly following Smartmatic’s lead. We fear that whoever has close links with the said firm will most probably win the elections,” Bahague said.

He said the automated election system would only work if the people at the helm were credible enough and aimed to protect the interests of the Filipinos instead of their own.

Having a computerized system in place would not eliminate cheating and election fraud, Bahague added.

Election manipulators will be at work just the same, he said, “but now with a different modus operandi.”

“Failure to address these issues would put the elections right in the palms of those in power, or worse, lead to a failure of elections,” Bahague said.

Don’t be greedy

The nine-member Comelec advisory council in a two-page resolution Tuesday urged the Comelec to push through with the automation project “using whatever legal means are available.”

The council also asked the Comelec to pursue legal actions against TIM executives.

Henrietta de Villa, chair of the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting and a member of the council, appealed to consortium officials to settle their differences.

“Nobody’s telling them not to make profit. You enter into a business to make profit, but don’t be greedy. Be responsible,” De Villa said in a phone interview with reporters.

She said she called TIM president Jose Mari Antuñez to ask him to “find a common ground” with Smartmatic.

“Automation gives us hope that cheating in manual elections would be limited. It can even end vote buying and selling because it cannot affect the results of the elections anyway,” De Villa said.