Comelec probing if bidding for 2016 poll automation contract was rigged

Commission on Elections chief George Garcia in a press briefing.—INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chair George Garcia said he had created a fact-finding team to investigate whether the procurement of the automated election system used in the 2016 presidential and national elections had been rigged.

He said he gave the 12 handpicked members of the “chairman’s task force” before the end of the year to complete the investigation.

The probe was prompted by reports that former Comelec Chair Andres Bautista was charged by the US Department of Homeland Security with money laundering and conspiracy before a US district court in Florida on Sept. 19.

The US Department of Homeland Security alleged that Bautista, who led the Comelec from April 2015 to October 2017, received bribe money from top executives of a poll technology company in exchange for assistance to win the Comelec contract.

On his social media account, Bautista said he “did not ask for nor receive any bribe money from Smartmatic or any other entity.”

He also said he was surprised by the charges since he was not contacted to comment on the complaint.

Smartmatic, a company established in the United States in 2000 and currently headquartered in the United Kingdom, has been the Philippines’ provider of elections technology and vote counting machines since the country adopted automated elections in 2010.

“We created a task force to investigate whatever happened that year. We want to know the root cause. Are the accusations true?” Garcia said in a news conference on Monday.

“If [the public bidding] was rigged, it could not be that only one person was involved. We are not saying the allegations are true but it’s better that the Comelec be prepared,” he added.

Garcia said he had ordered all departments of the Comelec to provide all the documents and records related to the procurement of the automated election system in 2016.

“The task force shall review all the documents and be done before the year ends,” he went on.

Garcia said the 12 members of the fact-finding task force were chosen for their “credibility and involvement in the past [procurement] process.”

In case the task force recommends filing charges in court, Garcia said this would be done by the seven-member board of the Comelec. INQ