We've been had. The wedding of the millennium, for which we have been waiting for many years, is about to end in divorce – even before the bride and bridegroom can say “I do.”

Trouble is, they already said they would. Trouble is, we believed them, hook, line and stinker. Bride Smartmatic and bridegroom Total Information Management signified their intentions to unite on an eleven-billion-peso deal in the presence of the officiating priest, Comelec Chairman Melo. But when the bridegroom asked the richer partner to cough up an additional dowry of P500 million, Smartmatic
smartly, automatically demurred, though not so demurely.

We’ve been had. As the parents and parents-in-law of this union of automated elections and political theater, have we been tricked out of a dream project? Mr. Melo is perceived to be a straight man, but maybe too straight that he cannot read the crooked criminal mind that engineered this Machiavellian piece of chicanery? (As an aside, I am curious to know if Mr. Melo can read a computer’s brain, too.)

From quotes in the newspapers and sound bites on TV, his spokesman sounds like he’s about to throw in the towel and let the betrothed couple walk, away from the aisle and free of each other, free of their obligations to us.

The law is very clear, it mandates fully automated elections in May 2010. But an expert says that when circumstances make compliance legally impossible, that law may be shelved (for the greater good of the guilty parties?). So now the stage is set to condition our hearts and minds to retreat to manual counting, even though we were never good at that, either.

Chairman Melo speaks with a soft voice when he counsels against forcing the couple to marry against their will: “The way I look at it, it’s over, they have lost their trust and confidence in each other. Even if they reconcile now, what’s to prevent them from quarreling again later? Who will suffer? They might not be able to fulfill the end of their contract.”

Spoken like a marriage/divorce counselor.