Another setback

In a shocking turn of events, the Commission on Elections put in limbo its plan to purchase direct recording electronic (DRE) and optical mark reader (OMR) machines to be used for next year’s elections.

Many were surprised why Comelec would disqualify the only two bidders interested in supplying additional automated vote-counting machines – Smartmatic of Venezuela and Indra Sistemas of Spain.

They are wondering why the BAC had opted to disqualify Smartmatic when its financial bid was only P1.72 billion or a third lower than the Comelec-pegged P2.5-billion ceiling, and even contained several project components being offered for free to the government.

Indra is in the hot seat for allegedly presenting phony eligibility records with regard to its participation in past automated elections in other countries.

Owing to this, Smartmatic has also asked the Comelec en banc in its protest letter to blacklist Indra and ban it from all of its poll-related projects, for making “a mockery of the Philippine electoral process” in having submitted “fraudulent statements and misrepresentations.”

The need for the Comelec to hold another public auction for the DRE and OMR machines to augment its Precinct Count Optical Scanner (PCOS) machines used in the past two polls will certainly delay its preparations for next year. It was good though that the previous Comelec leadership sealed last Dec. 23 a negotiated contract with Smartmatic for the diagnostic work on, and repair of, these 83,000-plus PCOS units. 

After the Comelec’s bids and awards committee disqualified both Smartmatic-Total Information Management Corp. (TIM) and Indra last Feb. 25 during the second stage of the two-phase P2.5-billion bidding for the DRE and OMR projects for being “non-responsive,” Smartmatic then filed a motion for reconsideration, claiming it was a “flimsy technicality.”

The BAC subsequently denied Smartmatic’s motion, prompting the firm to file a protest before the Comelec en banc last week seeking a reversal of its disqualification from the bidding for the lease of new voting machines, for submitting a non-responsive bid ostensibly because its financial proposal contained several items with “blank” price offers.

Citing the dissenting opinions of BAC members Divina Perez and Charlie Yap in the Feb. 25 decision, Smartmatic said its offer was not “non-responsive.” It explained that it was not an incomplete bid since the dash symbol in certain items means they were being offered for free to the Comelec.

Smartmatic said the BAC disqualifies a consultant if it provides for a required item but does not indicate a price for it and is thus deemed as non-compliant, except that if it specifies a ‘0’ (zero) or a ‘-‘ (dash) for the said item, it would be deemed as having offered the item for free to the government.

In a previous statement, Smartmatic president for Asia Pacific Cesar Flores asserted that his firm had merely followed the format issued by the Comelec itself. 

Flores said its bid price proposal for the OMR was 31 percent lower than P2.5-billion approved budget for the contract, adding that, “the goal of a competitive bid to find the best prices for the government was achieved, and it would be a shame if the benefits would be dismissed because of a flimsy technicality.”

Meanwhile, in seeking the suspension and blacklisting of Indra, Smartmatic noted that “Indra’s statements and submissions are heavily laden with inexplicable discrepancies and inconsistencies, thereby casting serious doubts on its credibility.”

Prior to Smartmatic’s submission of its blacklist-Indra petition, its lawyer Ruby Yusi had asked House suffrage and electoral reforms chair Rep. Frenedil Castro to look into allegations that Indra was under investigation in Spain for a number of issues, including a questionable track record in its business deals in Southeast Asia.

Yusi said the Argentina contract is a manual election and not an automated election and therefore, Indra is misleading the poll body into believing that said contract is of a similar nature to the current bid.

Incidentally, this delay in the P2.5-billion DRE/OMR projects resulting from the BAC’s Feb. 25 ruling to hold another public bidding vindicates the decision of the previous Comelec leadership under then chairperson Sixto Brillantes Jr. to forge a negotiated contract with Smartmatic last Dec. 23 on the diagnostics work on, and repair of, the 83,000-plus PCOS machines, instead of subjecting this project to the time-consuming public bidding.

By entering into a negotiated contract last December, the BAC was able to start the bidding for the lease of additional voting machines last February, rather than a few months later, if a public auction had been conducted instead for the diagnostic/repair work on the 83,000-plus PCOS units.

The agency came under fire for “unseemly haste” in sealing the Comelec-Smartmatic PCOS deal last December, but the events attending the public auction for the lease of DRE/OMR machines, which had brought the bidding process to a grinding halt, “proved the wisdom of setting an early start.”

A bipartisan group of lawmakers has vouched for the accuracy of AES/PCOS and these solons have separately warned the Comelec against selecting a new and untested service provider in the 2016 balloting.

Rep. Castro has said that critics would do well to just help the Comelec improve the automated system as they have failed to present “incontrovertible evidence to substantiate their claim” of electoral fraud, and the poll watchdog had handled the past two automated elections very well.

Cagayan de Oro City Rep. Rufus Rodriguez was initially opposed to the use of PCOS machines in 2010 but then had a change of heart after witnessing the accuracy of these units as a member of the House of Representatives Electoral Tribunal (HRET).

Ako Bicol Party-list Rep. Rodel Batocabe denounced the repeated and recycled claims of electoral fraud in the 2010 and 2013 polls, and pointed out that, “the worldwide trend is toward automation and we should not again go back to the Jurassic age where outcome of election results are known only after several weeks (or) even months.”

For his part, Parañaque City Rep. Gustavo Tambunting of the opposition United Nationalist Alliance (UNA), personally vouched for the accuracy of the PCOS machines, as proven by his victory over his pro-administration rival, noting that, “it would be a nightmare and terrible decision to go back to the old system of manual counting of votes, which takes forever and which allows miscounts and ballot switching and snatching.”

Echoing Tambunting’s warning, another opposition solon, Valenzuela City Rep. Sherwin Gatchalian, said that staging a semi-manual 2016 balloting would be “like going back to the Dark Ages.”

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