MANILA, Philippines — “Misguided and ill-conceived.”

That’s how a group of 10 lawyers and citizens described a P7.2-billion deal in a petition they filed in the Supreme Court Thursday for a temporary restraining order (TRO) to stop the Commission on Elections (Comelec) from signing on Friday the contract to automate next year’s balloting.

The group led by lawyer and administration critic Harry Roque alleged that Comelec and the joint-venture Smartmatic International and its local partner Total Information Management (TIM) violated the automated elections law (Republic Act No. 9369).

In a 49-page petition, the group said that while it favored an automated balloting “that will finally do away with the travails of the long wait and rampant cheating,” it was against the “misguided and ill-conceived conduct” of the Comelec tender.

The group warned that the project “promises to be yet another multibillion scam like its mothballed predecessor, the Mega Pacific automated counting machine project,” referring to the P1.3-billion deal the court junked prior to the 2004 presidential election.

To sign contract unless …

Comelec Chair Jose Melo welcomed Roque’s challenge. “I hope he checked his facts and the opinions of other lawyers.”

Comelec Commissioner Rene Sarmiento said the poll body would sign the contract on Friday unless the court intervenes.

“Hopefully this will be resolved as soon as possible so that there would be no obstacles … to fully implement poll automation,” he said.

In a news conference, Roque said there was still time for the Comelec to prepare for partial automation, either through the “open election system” proposed by the University of the Philippines College of Computer Science, or pilot testing automation technologies other than that proposed by Smartmatic.

Pilot testing

The petitioners said that the Comelec had failed to pilot test, as required by the automated election system law, the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines of Smartmatic-TIM.

According to Roque, RA 9369 mandates that the automated system to be used in the 2010 elections should be pilot tested first in at least two highly urbanized cities and two provinces each in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao.

The petitioners said that Smartmatic-TIM had also failed to submit all required documents before it made its bid for the project.

Roque questioned why the consortium did not include in its joint-venture agreement Jarltech Corp. and Dominion Voting Systems, the manufacturers of the machines and software, and 2Go, the firm that would distribute the machines.

Margin of error

The petitioners also said that the machines failed to meet the 0.005-percent error margin requirement set by law. Roque said based on Smartmatic’s website, the machines have an error margin of 2 to 10 percent.

“A margin of error of 2 to 10 per cent translates to 1.5 million to 5 million votes. In 2004 President Arroyo had a (winning) margin of 1 million votes. Can you imagine the impact of 1.5 to 5 million votes on a candidate?” Roque said.

As of press time Thursday night, there was still no word that the Supreme Court had acted on the petition.

Roque said if the contract signing could not be stopped, the group would still ask the high tribunal to direct the Comelec not to pay the consortium.

“We can not entrust our democracy on a system that has not been proven yet,” he said.

The poll automation project almost did not push through after TIM backed out of the consortium with Smartmatic due to “irreconcilable differences” over the control of the venture. But the two firms subsequently ironed out their differences.

Challenge too late

“The serious differences between TIM and Smartmatic clearly show that there is no community of interest between the two that would satisfy the definition of a joint venture set by this honorable court,” the group said.

He also said that the electronic transmission of data from the precincts was unsecured.

Carlos Medina, convenor of the Legal Network for Truthful Elections (Lente), said Roque’s initiative “may not be constructive anymore.”

“Instead of helping, it might derail automation,” he said. “If this will be delayed further, there might be no more time for another system,” Medina said.

“At this point, even though we have reservations, we support Comelec,” he added.