EDITORIAL - Let the Comelec and Smartmatic do their job

The greatest temptation at this time may be to curse at whatever is convenient to curse at in connection with the great anxiety brought about by the uncertainty of the automated polls that is already supposed to happen on Monday.

But cursing will never solve anything. It will just be a useless expending of energy. As far as the general public is concerned, it is already too late to do anything about the automated polls, glitches and everything.

The best thing at this point is to just step back and let the Comelec and its private contractor, Smartmatic, do their job. For while they may have gravely disappointed us, the fact of the matter is, they are still the people in the best position to finish what they started.

So the less distraction and unnecessary verbiage hurled against Comelec and Smartmatic, the better their chances at correcting the shortcomings that have hounded the process and doing all the corrections in time.

The window of opportunity for them to do that is shrinking and shrinking fast. Let us therefore not stand in their way. We may be justified in losing faith in them, but it would also be grossly irresponsible for us to bother them at a time when they need concentration most.

There is ample time for serious accounting later. Now is not the time. At this time the passions are running high. Everyone is under stress. No practical and meaningful benefit can ever be derived under such a confused environment.

The demand of the moment is good citizenship. It is required of all well-meaning Filipinos to demonstrate their capacity for positive-thinking. Now is not the time to be in great disarray, especially if the stakes are as high as they are.

The call of the day is for a peaceful and orderly transition of power. If the process to do that has been made extremely difficult, for whatever reason, it is not required of us to make things even worse. Let us help the Comelec and Smartmatic help us.