Smartmatic JV asks Comelec to overturn its disqualification from poll automation deal
The Smartmatic-led joint venture seeking to bag the automation contract for the 2016 polls has filed a protest before the Commission on Elections (Comelec), asking the collegial poll body to overturn its disqualification by the Comelec bids and awards committee (BAC).
“The latest recommendation for disqualification issued by the BAC is unfair and based on a wrongful technical interpretation of the [Comelec’s] Technical Working Group (TWG). We have satisfied 100-percent all the published technical requirements set forth in the request for proposal. We filed a protest to the Comelec en banc and we are confident that we can successfully demonstrate our technical compliance,” Cesar Flores, Smartmatic president for Asia Pacific, said in a statement.
Flores accused the BAC of “unfairly” disqualifying Smartmatic Joint Venture for “allegedly” failing the two-storage requirement. He said the firm “successfully” demonstrated how it could meet the requirement to the TWG on several occasions.
Even after Smartmatic had shown this functionality to the BAC, it still rendered a 3-2 vote, which relied on the “erroneous” interpretation of the TWG, Flores added.
In BAC’s resolution dated May 5 that disqualified Smartmatic joint venture, two issues were raised against the company. One was the alleged deficiency on the articles of incorporation of one of the members of the joint venture; and the failure of the company’s demonstration unit to meet the requirement that the system must have at least two storage devices, and shall be capable of writing to the same all data/files, audit log, statistics, and ballot images simultaneously.
Flores said the Smartmatic joint venture “passed every one” of the 400 technical requirements of the Comelec for the automation project, which would utilize the Optical Mark Reader mode.
“The records will clearly show that during the first stage, the Smartmatic JV was rated ‘passed’ for the same synchronization requirement. Yet in the second stage, the TWG deemed it ‘failed.’ We are willing to demonstrate our technical compliance to the en banc, and even to other stakeholders, like the Comelec Advisory Council and the Joint Congressional Committee on Automated Elections,” Flores said.
After filing a motion for reconsideration, the BAC cleared Smartmatic JV on the issue articles of incorporation, but it still kept the recommendation to fail the proposal based on the two-storage device issue.
In its protest, Smartmatic JV asked the en banc to reverse the disqualification and to declare it as the bidder with the lowest calculated responsive bid.
Smartmatic JV is composed of the Total Information Management Corp., Smartmatic-TIM Corp., Smartmatic International Holding B.V., and Jarltech International Inc..
Flores said that not only was Smartmatic election technology the best in the world but its prices were the most reasonable and most beneficial to Comelec.
“We have always offered unbeatable prices that are clearly advantageous to the [Philippine] government and the Filipino people. In fact, because our lease proposal is 31-percent lower than the actual budget, we are offering P700 million in savings to Comelec,” Flores said.
In contrast, Flores added, the other bidder overshot the budget by approximately P1.2 billion.
The bidding was supposed to be held for the lease of 23,000 additional vote-counting machines for the 2016 elections.
Last April, the Supreme Court nullified a P268.8-million contract between Comelec and the Smartmatic for the repair of more than 81,000 Precinct Count Optical Scan machines manufactured by the company during the 2013 polls and bought by the poll body for P1.8 billion the following year. The high court ruled that the deal could not proceed because the Comelec failed to do a public bidding.
New Comelec chair Andres Bautista said the poll body would decide by next month on two options: hold two biddings for the repair of the 81,000 PCOS machines and the lease for 23,000 more units, or to just buy 100,000 new ones under a new P14.5-billion contract SFM
