When we wrote about the controversial bidding of the Cavite-Laguna Expressway (CALAX) project a couple of months back, we mistakenly thought that President Benigno “P-Noy” Aquino III would immediately resolve this controversy, after all the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) program of Pres. Aquino was the most professionally and effectively run program under his watch. Then San Miguel Corp. (SMC) joined this bidding under the name of Optimal Infrastructure (OI) and suddenly the PPP Program was in serious trouble when OI/SMC was disqualified for their non-compliance of their Bid Security, which was a very clear violation of DPWH’s bidding rules.
After they were disqualified, SMC officials left the bidding room and called a presscon to denounce their disqualification. Then suddenly they went back to the DPWH to verbally announce their bid (which was P8 billion higher than the other bidders) to a horrified group inside the room who were waiting for the opening of their respective bids. Of course DPWH protested!
Four months passed and was wasted in this project for the reason that SMC’s Ramon Ang went to Pres. Aquino to appeal their disqualification. Thus this project was suspended until the President decides on what to do with it. We didn’t hear anything about CALAX until a week ago, when a news item about CALAX appeared that in effect said the Aquino Cabinet had decided to remove the $846 million CALAX project from the PPP program list and that the Aquino regime will just build this toll road on its own.
The official reason given to the public was that, Pres. Aquino wanted to avoid having that image of favoring one group over the other. Come now, isn’t this what happened exactly when SMC’s Ramon Ang went to Pres. Aquino and was favored by a suspension of the CALAX project?
Then last Thursday, the Business Section of the STAR featured a report, ‘CALAX rebid has no legal basis.’ Well I didn’t know that the Aquino regime suddenly did an about face and decided to have this project rebidded. Reading that STAR report, we learned that the partnership between the Ayala Corp. and Aboitiz Land, Inc. dubbed “Team Orion” issued a very important statement saying, “We are very concerned with the Office of the President’s current inclination to pursue a rebid of the Calax Project because of severe negative impact this decision would have on investor confidence in the PPP Program and on the integrity of the entire bidding process.”
The Team Orion statement went further to say that Malacañang has no legal basis to order a rebid as the process was conducted with transparency based on the Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) Law. Then they dropped their bombshell. After expressing their frustration and sentiment Team Orion has decided that if this project is rebidded, the would no longer participate in this PPP Project because it sends the wrong message to the nation that Pres. Aquino is indeed favoring SMC/Optimal Infrastructure over those legitimate bidders who should have already won this bidding by now.
So what is really happening inside Malacañang? I heard from very reliable sources that DPWH Sec. Rogelio Singson was adamant that there was nothing wrong with the bidding for the CALAX project, as it was a very transparent bidding process. The problem stems from SMC Chief Ramon Ang’s unabashedly using his connections with Pres. PNoy to stop the bidding process and it was made worse when Pres. PNoy obliged him!
So in the last four months, the Aquino Regime found themselves in their usual wishy-washy Student government selves… totally undecided on what to do with the CALAX project. Finally, out of the blue, they decided to do the CALAX project by themselves and remove the CALAX project from the PPP Program so that it won’t appear that they didn’t side with anyone in this project. They must think we are all so stupid not to see this through!
But in suspending this project… in effect Pres. PNoy already took the side of SMC in this battle of the Aquino cronies. Come on folks, we weren’t born yesterday! Poor Pres. PNoy he is lost between the devil and the deep blue sea on this PPP Project because by rebidding this project, he is openly admitting that there were serious flaws in the bidding process, which I’m sure that DPWH officials would stand by their ground that the bidding for the CALAX project was above board.
I fully agree that Pres. PNoy has no legal basis to rebid the CALAX project. But I’m sure that Pres. PNoy is taking a big risk that his friends in Team Orion; the Ayala’s and the Aboitiz’s no matter how sore they are because of this proposal to rebid this project won’t file any suit against the DPWH and further embarrass the Aquino Regime. But then I could be wrong; Team Orion might just file a suit vs the DPWH so they could stall this project further and use the snail paced Justice system to decide this issue a few years after the Aquino Presidency is out of Malacañang.
* * *
For email responses, write to vsbobita@mozcom.com or vsbobita@gmail.com.