‘Failed biddings for PCOS upgrade a setback for Comelec’

MANILA, Philippines - An official of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) yesterday admitted that the two failed public biddings for the refurbishment of the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines have gravely affected the poll body’s timeline.

Comelec Commissioner Christian Robert Lim told reporters that the Steering Committee for the 2016 election, which he chairs, had written the commission and “we are saying that the en banc should resolve with dispatch all pending issues so we can move forward.”

“The timeline is really greatly affected… I hope (today), the en banc will already have a decision. We will be pushing (for that),” he added.

Last Saturday, the second bidding for the P3.1-billion contract to refurbish the 81,896 PCOS machines was declared a failure after two bidders, Smartmatic-Total Information Management (TIM) Corp. and Miru Systems Co., backed out, citing the tight timeline for the project.

The third and lone bidder – the joint venture of Dermalog Identification Systems GmbH, Avante Technology, and Stone of David Technical Equipment – was declared “ineligible” by the Special Bids and Awards Committee-2 (SBAC) after some of the technical and eligibility requirements.

The joint venture manifested that it would be filing a motion for reconsideration.

Lim said he was told by SBAC-2 that if there are already two failed biddings, they could resort to negotiated or direct contracting, but the Comelec en banc has not yet decided on this.

“In negotiated (contract), you are going to ask the interested bidders, or those who bought the bidding document to submit their best offer. That’s the usual procedure,” he added.

The first bidding for the PCOS refurbishment was also declared a failure after three bidders, Smartmatic-TIM, Indra Sistemas S.A. and Vertex Business Applications also withdrew from the bidding.

The bidders cited the reduction of the budget from P2.8 billion to P2 billion, prompting the Comelec to increase the price tag to P3.1 billion by including some provisions such as modems.

Comelec mulls extended campaign

The Comelec is also looking at extending the campaign period for local and national candidates by one month and by 75 days, respectively.

Lim said the poll body wants to prolong the schedule to capture candidates who are campaigning outside of the campaign period.

“It’s really a move against the epal (lacking attention) candidates. Like the local candidates, their campaign period should be on the last week of March. What they are doing is on the third week of March, they do vote-buying and that is epal. This is a move to stem out epal candidates,” he noted.

In Comelec’s proposed Calendar of Activities, the poll body has set the campaign period from Jan. 10 to May 7, 2016 for candidates for president down to local elective posts and even those running in the Party-List System.

But under the Omnibus Election Code, the campaign period for national candidates should be 90 days before Election Day while local bets are given 45 days.

This means that the start of the campaign period for national polls should not begin until Feb. 9, 2016, while that of the local polls should be on March 25, 2016.

Lim clarified that the Comelec is not violating the Omnibus Election Code because they have “flexibility” in Republic Act 8436.