Imee sponsors election bill

Without mentioning her alleged role in the attempt to waive election procurement safeguards in the 2021 budget, Sen. Imee Marcos on Monday sponsored a bill calling for a hybrid voting system in the 2022 general elections, in order, she said, to take back political power that had been wrested by “sinister and unknown machines.” The chair of the Senate electoral reforms panel only briefly alluded to an Inquirer report naming her as the proponent of the “very dangerous” but later deleted clause in the General Appropriations Act of 2021 to disregard “all the requirements and safeguards” under the automated election law.

The Inquirer, citing three sources, including from the Senate and the House of Representatives, reported on Sunday that Marcos was the unnamed senator who introduced a last-minute amendment to the budget bill to waive procurement guidelines that would otherwise disqualify many bidders.

In her speech on Monday, Marcos said that “despite the persistent canard,” the procurement safeguards in the hybrid election bill were untouched.

“First, the process begins with procurement, which despite the persistent canard, remains entirely intact, the requisites of the national procurement law unchanged under Section 9 [of the bill],” she said.

But apparently contradicting her own words, the daughter of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos then identified a feature in the bill stating that at least one procurement requirement “may be forgone” in order to “open procurement to as many prospective bidders as possible.”

“Still, in order to open procurement to as many prospective bidders as possible, our bill echoes the long-established DBM (Department of Budget and Management) Government Procurement Policy Board ruling that the requirement for a prior single largest completed contract may be forgone when a failure of bidding is imminent or monopolistic or novel requisites are observed.”

“Thus following this guideline,” according to Marcos, “we require in our bill simply the less onerous proof of financial, technical and organizational capability to conduct such exercise.”

“We pray that with this reminder, many will qualify, many more potential bidders to provide new opportunity especially for capable and talented Filipino system providers in the IT (information technology) sector,” she said.

She said the bill, originally introduced by Senate President Vicente Sotto III but substituted to include input from the panel members, would ensure that “prospective system providers should still have to prove and demonstrate that ability and [must have] successfully undertaken a prior electoral exercise here or abroad.”

“We must at all cost(s) prevent a failure of election caused by an incompetent or untested bidder,” said Marcos, who took part in Monday’s session via videoconferencing. INQ