Comelec insists nothing illegal with P268.8-M contract with Smartmatic-TIM

MANILA, Philippines—The Commission on Elections (Comelec) on Thursday asked the Supreme Court to dismiss the petitions that sought the nullification of its P268.8-million contract with Smartmatic-Total Information Management (Smartmatic-TIM).

In its 81-page consolidated comment, the poll body said the contract is aboveboard and did not violate the Procurement Act.

Petitioners Clean and Credible Elections (C3E) and the Automated Election System (AES), in their separate petitions said Comelec violated the Procurement Act when it resorted to direct contracting instead of competitive bidding which is required under the law.

“While RA 9184 (Procurement Act) mandates that all government procurement should be by competitive bidding, it also allows for alternative modes of procurement such as direct contracting as long as the requisites therefore are present. In this case, Comelec en banc found that, due to the highly technical nature of the PCOS (precinct count optical scan) machines, the refurbishment services can only be  sourced from Smartmatic-TIM,” Comelec said.

They pointed out that resorting to direct contracting is a pragmatic decision because its budget for the holding of the 2016 polls amounting to P16, 814,910,000 was way below the P18,436,416,378 it requested, adding this is not sufficient  to allow the procurement of new PCOS machines for next year’s elections.

“Faced with this budgetary complaint, and with very limited time left for competitive bidding, Comelec en banc decided to pursue the legal and most practicable option it has-direct contracting with Smartmatic-TIM for the refurbishment of the PCOS machines,” it said.

The Comelec said it cannot be faulted and accused of committing grave abuse of discretion when it took these legal and pragmatic steps.

At the same time, the poll body raised the specter of a “partly manual and partly automated elections” in 2016 if the PCOS machines are not refurbished on time adding that such a predicament would once again result in the problems raised in previous elections such as delay, electoral fraud, massive disenfranchisement of voters and distrust in the electoral system before automation was implemented.

The poll body also said that to give the repair and refurbishment of the vote counting machines to any third party provider other than Smartmatic-TIM will be too great a risk considering the highly technical nature of the work to be done on the 82, 000 PCOS machines.

Also, the poll body said the “PCOS is exclusively manufactured in the Philippines by Smartmatic-TIM, which does not have sub-dealers and there is no direct substitute for the product.”

Aside from that, Comelec added that the petitioners have no legal standing to take the case to the high court.

It said petitioners should have first exhaust all available remedies by filing a motion for reconsideration before the Comelec’s en banc or at the regional trial courts before going to the high court.

Comelec added that petitioners failed to show that they are “aggrieved parties” with the signing of the contract.

Aside from C3E and AES, the Integrated Bar of the Philippines also filed a similar petition before the SC seeking to void the award of the contract to Smartmatic-TIM for the repair and refurbishment of the PCOS vote counting machines.

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