Last Friday, I got this strange letter from a certain Samira Saba of Smartmatic, the Dutch-Barbados-Venezuelan firm that partnered with the local Total Information Management and won the P7.2 billion contract for the nationwide automation of the 2010 elections.Here’s the letter:
Dear Mrs. Ellen,
My name is Samira Saba and I work at Smartmatic as the Marketing and Communications Manager (www.smartmatic.com).
I have checked your blog and I find it quite interesting. I can see the articles published are responsible, and show that you as a rule strive to inform and educate your readers. For instance, the article “Rock the vote!”
I would like to know if you have the time and the interest of writing some articles regarding the following subjects:
1) Election automation worldwide, and positive experiences in various countries.
2) Election automation in the Philippines, past and present.
3) Different technologies to automate an election. Perspectives and comparisons: shortcomings, advantages, political implications.
4) Smartmatic technology in particular (in this case, we would of course furnish appropriate materials to the required depth).
If you are interested in adding our organization as a regular client for your freelance writer services, we can define the extent and number of articles you could write monthly. I will be glad to give you more details and answer the questions you may have.
If your answer to the above is positive, then I would appreciate a quotation for your services, with a target of two articles published per month to begin with.
I look forward to hearing from you the soonest.
It was signed by Ms Saba.
I find the letter insulting. It smacks of bribery. I had to take several deep breaths and reminded myself that I should not write anything when I’m angry.