MANILA – The Philippine Commission on Elections (Comelec) announced it approved a resolution awarding the contract, worth the equivalent of $170 million, to the remaining sole bidder for the automation of the May 2010 polls.
Retired Supreme Court justice Jose Melo, the Comelec chairman, said the resolution officially declared the consortium Smartmatic- Total Information Management Corporation as the bidder with the lowest calculated responsive bid and thus, earned for itself the lease contract for the machines.
As the winning bidder, Smartmatic is to provide about 82,000 Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines to computerize next year’s polls in which more than 45 million voters are to elect the successors of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and Vice President Noli de Castro whose terms expire on June 30, 2010.
In a statement, Melo said the Smartmatic’s total bid of $170 million was well within $200 million budget, which was allocated by the national government, for the poll automation project.
Melo added the Comelec is to award the lease contract to Smartmatic in the next few days, as he pointed out: “After this, the preparations for automation will proceed…Everything is on track.â€
Malacanang also welcomed on Wednesday the Comelec decision, saying this would disprove claims from the political opposition and other concerned sectors that there would be no elections next year due to the approval by the House of Representatives of a controversial resolution reviving Charter change (Cha-cha).
Critics have insisted that Cha-cha was a ploy initiated by administration lawmakers to extend the terms of President Arroyo and other elective officials beyond 2010 by changing the form of government from the present presidential system to federal parliamentary.
A Smartmatic spokesman, meanwhile, assured on Wednesday that the results of the voting, including the election of the new president and other officials, will be known in just two days.
Melo said Smartmatic was recommended by the Comelec’s special bids and awards committee after hurdling the month-long eligibility, technical, financial and post-qualification screening against six other bidders, composed of local information technology companies and their foreign partners.
He added the Comelec was also guided by the endorsements of the non-government organization Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting, the office of the Ombudsman and the Comelec Advisory Council in awarding the automation contract to Smartmatic.
In particular, Melo cited a report from the office of the Ombudsman which sent representatives to the bidding, saying that the processes observed were in consonance with the Constitution, the country’s procurement laws, jurisprudence and the Poll Automation Law that paved the way for the computerization of the 2010 polls.
But this is not the first time that Smartmatic will work with the Comelec to computerize 2010 elections, which aims to wean the country away from the outmoded and ancient system of manual voting and counting of ballots which, in the past, have given rise to charges of massive cheating and other poll irregularities.
Comelec records showed that Smartmatic likewise supplied the machines to automate the August 2008 elections at the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
As envisioned, the machines to be provided by Smartmatic for the 2010 polls will ensure that the votes from the election precincts at the grassroots are transmitted to the next levels and provide other election paraphernalia, information technology logistics and management to the Comelec.
Under the system, the ballots are marked and then fed into a scanning machine that will count and record the votes. The ballot drops down into a box under the scanner.
At the end of the voting, the Board of Election Inspectors will print the election returns and transmit the votes to the next canvassing level, like the municipal, provincial and regional levels of the electoral process.
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