Solon questions bidding for PCOS

MANILA, Philippines–The chair of the House committee on suffrage and electoral reforms smells something fishy in the bid submitted by a Spanish state-owned information technology (IT) firm to supply voting machines for the next elections.

In a privilege speech, Cavite Rep. Elpidio Barzaga Jr. questioned Indra Sistemas’ motive for making a patently ineligible bid to supply the Commission on Elections with precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines for the May 2016 polls.

Barzaga said Indra was fully aware that its P3.686-billion bid, which was almost 50-percent higher than the P2.5-billion approved budget for the contract (ABC) for the PCOS machines, would mean its outright disqualification from the Feb. 25 bidding.

Barzaga, whose panel will hold a public hearing on the actions of the Comelec bids and awards committee (BAC), said that under Section 31 of the Government Procurement Act, or Republic Act No. 9184, bids that exceed the ABC should be disqualified outright from further participating in the bidding.

Not only could Barzaga not fathom why Indra would submit an ineligible bid, he also asked why two of the five members of the Comelec’s BAC—lawyers Charlie Yap and Maria Juana Valeza—did not disqualify Indra.

Very qualified

“They say Indra is very qualified to bid for the automatic election system, so why did it give a very high bid? Is Indra really serious about participating in the public bidding or does it have another agenda? Is Indra making a mockery of our electoral process? Or is Indra as well as its advocates really planning for a return to manual counting with automatic transmission of the results?” Barzaga said.

What has further complicated the bidding was the Comelec’s decision to disqualify the other bidder—Smartmatic TIM—after its bid was deemed “non-responsive” due to a technicality when it wrote in a dash instead of zero for four bid items.

Barzaga said that except for this technicality, Smartmatic’s offer of P2.229 billion was 11 percent lower than the ABC for the PCOS machines.

“The BAC said a dash does not signify that the items are being offered for free to the government. But Smartmatic used a dash or a hyphen instead of a zero in the items in its bid which is equivalent to placing a zero as confirmed in several issuances of the Government Procurement Policy Board. The dash is recognized as equivalent to zero (“0”) for items being offered for free to the government,” Barzaga said.

He cited GPPB Resolution No. 23-2013 which states that “specifying a ’0’ (zero) or dash (-) for the said item would mean that it is being offered for free to the government.”

Why a failure?

“Why declare a failure of bidding when, in fact, it is evident that one of the bids is responsive, and there is in fact a winning bid? Is it intentional to delay the preparations and planning which could eventually raise more questions on the transparency of the conduct of the 2016 elections? Will this lead to the 2016 elections being in peril?” Barzaga said.

He said the moves by the Comelec would force an unnecessary delay of one or two months to its preparations for the May 2016 elections since it would have to conduct a second bidding.