Maricar Quiambao's fingers hover over the computer keyboard as she prepares to compose a message to Filipino voters.
"Don't vote for FPJ," she says, laughing mischievously at her slight against movie star turned presidential front-runner Fernando Poe Jr.
Quiambao, a campaign adviser to politicians linked to President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, is testing software to send political text messages to thousands of mobile telephones simultaneously.
By the time Filipinos go to the polls on May 10 to elect a president and 17,000 other officials across the archipelago, many mobile phone owners will have received hundreds of messages aimed at influencing their decisions at the polling booth.
Most will be harmless jokes knocking down a candidate, but others will be potentially damaging rumors that could swing the vote in a close race.
"It's now an effective conveyor of black propaganda," says Senator Edgardo Angara, president of Poe's LDP party, the main opposition bloc.
While US Democratic Party candidate Howard Dean boasted of harnessing the Internet to rally grassroots supporters in his failed bid to run for president, his nation's poor former colony is employing digital communications to far greater effect.
The Philippines is where opponents of Arroyo's predecessor, former movie star Joseph Estrada, famously used the short message service (SMS) of mobile phones to help organize a "People Power" revolt that drove him from the president's office.
Arroyo, who rose from vice president in the January 2001 uprising, now faces voters for the first time as leader.
With polls showing her and Poe running neck and neck, neither candidate -- nor others running for posts such as senator and mayor -- can afford to ignore the influence of text messaging.
The country's 22 million mobile users, more than a quarter of the population, send an average of seven messages each every day.
That heavy text traffic has made mobile operators Smart Communications Inc, Globe Telecom Inc and Pilipino Telephone Corp some of the strongest companies in an underperforming economy.
Text messaging is such an accepted form of communication that central bank Governor Rafael Buenaventura sends comments on interest rates or the level of the peso to reporters via SMS.
It is unlikely US Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has ever tapped "irrational exuberance" into his cellphone.
Mobiles in Manila buzz with election-related messages. Along with the jokes, mostly impenetrable to anyone without a deep knowledge of the country's politics and culture, is the occasional potential bombshell.
Angara says the LDP's vice presidential candidate, Senator Loren Legarda, was the victim of false messages saying she submitted bills to cut pay for teachers, soldiers and firefighters.
Other messages have proven stunningly accurate, such as those saying Poe had fathered a child during an affair with an actress. Confronted with the allegation, potentially damaging in this Roman Catholic country, Poe confirmed it was true.
When that appeared to inflict no damage on his reputation, new messages elaborating on the initial story started to spread. So far Poe has not responded to these.
Why text messaging has caught on so rapidly in the Southeast Asia nation is the subject of some debate.
Some say Filipinos are shy and appreciate the relative anonymity of texting. Others say conventions such as enquiring after the health of one another's families before starting to chat verbally has made SMS an attractive time-saver.
Certainly, money is a factor. Sending a message can cost as little as half a peso (0.9 US cents), an affordable option in a country where the minimum wage in the capital is just US$5 a day.
It is also a cheap way to spread propaganda.
Send a message to campaign members who have been instructed to forward it to friends and supporters. Within hours, thousands of mobile phones are bleeping.
In Internet parlance, it is "viral marketing." Mobile users often get messages from numbers they don't recognize, suggesting they are spread by people or computers sending them at random.
"Text messaging will be crucial in some local contests," says Ramon Duremdes Jr, whose company Mobile Arts makes SMS software.
As she tests out the software in the Mobile Arts office by sending messages to her own phone, Quiambao decides against the anti-Poe text she had been toying with.
Instead, she types what will probably be the least controversial message of the whole election: "Vote wisely."
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
BOMBARDMENT: Moscow sent more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, in ‘one of the most terrifying strikes’ on the capital in recent months A nighttime Russian missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine killed at least 15 people and injured 116 while they slept in their homes, local officials said yesterday, with the main barrage centering on the capital, Kyiv. Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said 14 people were killed and 99 were injured as explosions echoed across the city for hours during the night. The bombardment demolished a nine-story residential building, destroying dozens of apartments. Emergency workers were at the scene to rescue people from under the rubble. Russia flung more than 440 drones and 32 missiles at Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki yesterday erupted again with giant ash and smoke plumes after forcing evacuations of villages and flight cancelations, including to and from the resort island of Bali. Several eruptions sent ash up to 5km into the sky on Tuesday evening to yesterday afternoon. An eruption on Tuesday afternoon sent thick, gray clouds 10km into the sky that expanded into a mushroom-shaped ash cloud visible as much as 150km kilometers away. The eruption alert was raised on Tuesday to the highest level and the danger zone where people are recommended to leave was expanded to 8km from the crater. Officers also
RSS