Smartmatic pleads case with Comelec

The Smartmatic-led joint venture (JV) seeking to bag the automation contract for next year’s polls has asked the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to overturn the group’s disqualification by the Comelec bids and awards committee (BAC).

“The latest recommendation for disqualification issued by the BAC is unfair and based on a wrongful technical interpretation of the [Comelec’s] technical working group (TWG). We have satisfied 100 percent all the published technical requirements set forth in the request for proposal,” Cesar Flores, Smartmatic president for Asia Pacific, said in a statement.

“We filed a protest in the Comelec en banc and we are confident that we can successfully demonstrate our technical compliance,” he added.

Flores accused the BAC of “unfairly” disqualifying Smartmatic joint venture for “allegedly” failing the two-storage device requirement. He said the firm “successfully” demonstrated the requirement to the TWG on several occasions.

Smartmatic JV is composed of Total Information Management Corp., Smartmatic-TIM Corp., Smartmatic International Holding B.V. and Jarltech International Inc.

Even after Smartmatic had shown this functionality to the BAC, it still rendered a 3-2 vote which relied on the “erroneous” interpretation of the TWG, Flores said.

Two issues

In BAC’s resolution dated May 5 that disqualified the Smartmatic joint venture, two issues were raised against the company. One was the alleged deficiency in the articles of incorporation of one of the members of the joint venture.

Another was the failure of the company’s demonstration unit to meet the requirement that the system must have at least two storage devices, and shall be capable of writing to the same all data/files, audit log, statistics and ballot images simultaneously

The Comelec was supposed to bid out the contract to lease 23,000 additional vote-counting machines for the 2016 elections.

Last April, the Supreme Court nullified a P268.8-million contract between Comelec and Smartmatic for the repair of more than 81,000 precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines provided by the company during the 2013 elections and bought by the poll body for P1.8 billion the following year.

The high court ruled that the deal may not proceed due to lack of a public bidding.

New Comelec Chair Andres Bautista said the poll body would decide by next month on two options: To hold two bidding exercises for the repair of the 81,000 PCOS machines and the lease of 23,000 more units, or to just buy 100,000 new machines under a new P14.5-billion contract.

Met 400 requirements

Flores said the Smartmatic group passed each of the 400 technical requirements of the Comelec for the automation project, which would use the optical mark reader mode.

“The records will clearly show that during the first stage, the Smartmatic JV was rated ‘passed’ for the same synchronization requirement. Yet in the second stage, the TWG deemed it ‘failed.’ We are willing to demonstrate our technical compliance to the en banc, and even to other stakeholders, like the Comelec Advisory Council and the Joint Congressional Committee on Automated Elections,” Flores said.

In the House of Representatives, the chair of the committee on suffrage and electoral reforms said Smartmatic should be allowed to participate in the Comelec bidding for poll equipment, supplies and services, including the bidding where it was disqualified.

“There is no prohibition that Smartmatic can rejoin another bidding. And there is no rule considering that they were disqualified, they will not be allowed to participate in the second round of bidding,” said Capiz Rep. Fredenil Castro.–Reports from Jerome Aning and Gil C. Cabacungan