Comelec junks petition to blacklist Smartmatic

Comelec office. FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines—The Commission on Elections’ (Comelec) bids and awards committee (BAC) on Thursday denied the petition of several groups seeking to blacklist election technology provider Smartmatic International from joining the public bidding for the 2016 automated election system (AES).

The BAC said the Citizens for Clean and Credible Elections (C3E), which led various groups in filing the petition against Smartmatic, has no legal personality to initiate a blacklisting complaint against the multinational company as it is neither a bidder nor a duly authorized observer.

“The complainants are not duly authorized observers as far as this BAC is concerned,” said BAC in its decision announced during the opening of bids for the lease of optical mark reader (OMR) system.

According to the BAC, its authority to blacklist bidders is based only on the present bidding process and not on previous ones, such as what took place five years ago.

Premature complaint

“This present BAC, which was constituted for purposes of procuring goods and services in connection… [with] the regular requirements of the Commission for the current year and for 2015 and 2016 electoral activities, has no jurisdiction over the complaint at hand,” said the panel.

Also, the committee said the complaint was filed prematurely as Smartmatic had not yet submitted its eligibility documents for the present bidding process.

“Still, we could not rule on any alleged misrepresentation committed by any bidder in connection… [with] the procurements at hand,” said BAC.

But BAC chair Helen Aguila-Flores said the complainants may still appeal their ruling either to the Comelec en banc or the Supreme Court.

Last week, C3E filed a 33-page petition at the Comelec-BAC asking the latter to prevent Smartmatic and its local partner, Total Information Management Corp. (TIM), from again joining the bidding for the AES to be used in the next presidential elections.

Publicity stunt

“It was to be expected. As mentioned before, this was nothing but a publicity stunt by groups, who don’t want us to participate in the bidding. And, also, these were issues rehashed five years ago that were already answered by the Supreme Court on two occasions already. So I am very glad and I welcome this decision by the Comelec and this committee,” said Smartmatic president Cesar Flores.

Only Smartmatic-TIM Corp. and Indra Sistemas have submitted their eligibility requirements and initial technical proposals to the BAC as of Thursday.

The Comelec is planning to lease 23,000 OMR machines to be used as supplement to the precinct count optical scan units, which will be re-used in the 2016 elections, for P2.5 billion.