Comelec lawyers buck Smartmatic deal

Comelec office. FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines—The Commission on Elections’ (Comelec) law department has opposed the idea of a negotiated contract or an extended deal with the Smartmatic Corp. for the refurbishing of the more than 80,000 automated voting machines that the Comelec had bought earlier from the firm.

In a Nov. 4 legal opinion, a copy of which was obtained by the Inquirer, the law department cited the Government Procurement Law, or Republic Act No. 9184, which mandates that all procurement have to be done through competitive bidding and allows alternative methods of procurement “only in highly exceptional cases.”

The legal opinion, signed by Director Esmeralda Ladra, said it was premature to talk about the repair of the units when it has yet to be determined if the units need repairing, or about the replacement of servers and network equipment when it also has yet to be determined that these need replacing.

Earlier this week, the Citizens for Clean and Credible Elections (C3E) poll watchdog coalition deplored that the Comelec “would be contracting again for the supply of additional precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines and refurbishing used units with a company which has never been an expert in automating elections.”

C3E formally asked the Comelec to blacklist Smartmatic from all its election-related projects for alleged misrepresentation for claiming that it manufactured and owned the automated voting machines it had supplied, and for numerous violations of the country’s election laws.

The Comelec on Thursday described as “hearsay and rehashed” the petition that lawyer Homobono Adaza before the Supreme Court, seeking to stop the poll body from conducting the public bidding for the 2016 automated election system.

In his petition, Adaza said the bidding could push through only after the resolution of the pending legal questions on the Comelec’s deal with Smartmatic, the election technology provider during the 2010 and 2013 elections.