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."
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