Anomalous deals still abound at Comelec

The Comelec is reaping the whirlwind of its rashness. Smartmatic, fast-break awardee of its P7.2-billion automation, is unable to deliver the first 42,200 of 82,200 vote counters by this month. So grave is the contract breach that the Venezuelan firm must be penalized 0.1% or P7.2 million per day of delay, as stipulated. Timetables of the May 2010 polls are held up: 400,000 schoolteachers, who will act as precinct officers, cannot train in operating the gadgets. Legislators are bashing the poll body.

Yet in seeming cover-up the en banc is forfeiting the fines. Chairman Jose Melo says they just want to get automation going. It’s an old alibi. In April they rushed the contract award in spite of Smartmatic’s deficient submissions (for which contenders were disqualified) and burnout of its battery cable during endurance testing. The only difference then was that bid managers were quick to fine other bidders 1% of the P12.3-billion automation budget, or P123 million, to question the undue haste. This time Melo is willing to automate only some precincts, if only to let Smartmatic off the hook.

As Comelec babies Smartmatic, bad news comes from abroad. For one, Smartmatic founders had a falling off with Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, after handing him three questioned elections. Pretending to clean up his corrupt regime, the strongman has banned 49 notorious companies from state dealings. One of them is Smartmatic affiliate Tecnologia Smarmatic de Venezuela C.A. (see http://alekboyd.blogspot.com/2009/12/smartmatic-banned-in-venezuela.html).

Another concerns Smartmatic’s refusal to disclose to experts the all-important source code of its vote counters. This fuels fears of automated rigging embedded in the computer program. Smartmatic would only say that US testing outfit SysTest is still reviewing its source code prior to purchase of similar vote counters by the state of New York. The last from Melo is that, “After SysTest submits its report, it [source code] will be open for review of other interested parties ... under a controlled environment.” The catch, though, is that source code reviews take at least a year; SysTest began work on the New York machines in 2007 and has yet to finish. The report might come only after the May 2010 balloting. And even if SysTest finishes early, the Comelec has no capability to check the report.

Meanwhile, SysTest is under fire. Last year it was exposed for using unqualified testers in high-tech procedures (see http://www.opednews.com/articles/SysTest-Labs-under-Fire-Fo-by-Rady-Ananda-080815-39.html).

Too, US poll supplier Premier Election Solutions (formerly Diebold) has sued SysTest for fraud. For shoddiness, the US Election Assistance Commission suspended SysTest’s accreditation a week before the 2008 election, wreaking havoc on Premier’s business (see http://www.courthousenews.com/2009/01/23/Electronic_Voting_ Manufacturer_Claims_Testing_Lab_s_Shoddy_ Work_Wreaked_Havoc.htm).

* * *

Coinciding with the automation bidding was the one for Automated Fingerprint Identification System. The AFIS would have cleaned up the voters’ lists by purging multiple or dead registrants. The P1.6-billion project was a crucial adjunct to automation. But soon after awarding the contract to Unison-NEC, the Comelec en banc ruled that the cleansing couldn’t be completed in time for the 2010 elections after all. The Unison-NEC technology just couldn’t process 50 million voters in eight months. So only new registrants were required to fingerprint; old voters were given up to 2013 to update their records.

The three-year extension saves Unison-NEC P600 million in space and manpower costs. But the Comelec did not renegotiate the contract down to P1 billion. In effect it gave Unison-NEC a P600-million bonus for misleading it to believe that the work could be done fast.

The bidding was anomalous. Unison-NEC’s bid was only P13,516.58 lower than the Comelec ceiling, or impossibly 99.999155% of budget. The only other bidder, SAHI-TigerIT, had offered P1.2 billion, or P400 million lower. Yet the bid committee disqualified it on flimsy grounds, then sat on its protest. Meanwhile, the technical working group endorsed Unison-NEC to the en banc with not a single critical comment. The Info-Tech department destroyed all records of bid rigging.

Recently IT chief Jeannie Flororita, data center head Ferdie de Leon, and clerk Maria Luisa Tolentino quietly flew to Japan, all expenses paid by Unison-NEC. Tolentino had very little to do with the AFIS. But she’s the wife of Comelec executive director Jose Tolentino, who headed its technical working group in the MegaPacific scam of 2003.

The same brokers behind Unison-NEC are now angling for the P600-million tracking project. Bragging closeness to the commissioners, they will reportedly bag the deal to track the ballot boxes and voter counters without public bidding. The P400-million voter education project too will skirt open auction.

* * *

“We often feel God’s love first before we begin to love Him. Feeling has a way of jumping ahead of the action.” Shafts of Light, Fr. Guido Arguelles, SJ

* * *

E-mail: [email protected]