Bidder asks SC to stop Comelec CF card deal

MANILA, Philippines - A private firm asked the Supreme Court (SC) yesterday to immediately stop the Commission on Elections (Comelec) from purchasing compact flash (CF) cards for the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines that will be used in the automated polls this May.

LDLA Marketing chief executive officer Norlito Domantay said allowing the contract to proceed without resolving their protest would cause irreparable damage to their firm, which participated in two biddings for 82,200 CF cards.

Comelec chairman Sixto Brillantes said he expects the SC to dismiss the petition. He added that the LDLA, before going to the SC, should have filed a motion before the Comelec’s special bids and awards committee, which will in turn submit a recommendation to the Comelec’s commissioners.

Domantay said their firm, along with Smartmatic and SPH International, were invited to join a sealed bidding on Dec. 8, 2012. He said while LDLA’s bid of P33.5 million was the lowest, Smartmatic’s bid of P50.9 million exceeded the approved budget for the contract of P46.5 million. SPH International submitted the second lowest bid of P45.2 million.

Domantay questioned why the Comelec’s special bids and awards committee, on Dec. 19, 2012, asked Smartmatic to submit a lower bid to meet the budget for the contract. In the second bidding, another bidder, Unison, submitted a bid of P44 million while LDLA submitted a bid of P36.5 million.

“Then, Comelec awarded the project to Smartmatic on the pretense that the CF cards of the other bidders were somewhat difficult to eject from the PCOS machine,” he alleged.

Domantay said the CF cards could not work with Smartmatic’s PCOS machines because Smartmatic “continues to refuse to declare the technical requirements” for the cards, claiming the data “is proprietary information.”

He also said the LDLA’s CF cards “have been tested twice” by the bid committee’s technical working group, “and on both occasions, they met the technical requirements. They were also the same cards previously supplied by LDLA to Smartmatic during the 2010 national elections.”

Comelec bid committee chair Helen Aguila-Flores said the process was aboveboard and that there was nothing wrong with awarding the contract to Smartmatic.– With Mayen Jaymalin