EDITORIAL - No sweeping under the rug

Not too long ago, the Commission on Elections faced a string of scandals, with one of them not even related to the conduct of elections. By most assessments, the Comelec has managed to redeem itself following the success of the country’s venture into poll automation, although losing candidates and their relatives will disagree.

The Comelec should sustain its momentum in regaining public trust by confronting questions regarding its supply procurement. Those questions led to the scrapping of a deal that would have made the Comelec buy 1.8 million ballot secrecy folders at a cost of P690 million, or P380 each. The contract was initially awarded to a company that applied for a patent to its folder design 17 days before submitting its bid to the Comelec. One Time Carbon or OTC Paper Supply, which has reportedly won other supply contracts at the Comelec, offered to produce folders made of polypropylene or hard plastic and as long as the new ballots.

Comelec commissioners were about to approve the bid when an employee who used to be assigned at the chairman’s office, Melchor Magdamo, and a volunteer of the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting, Arwin Serrano, questioned the deal. The commissioners decided that the folders were too extravagant and that the contract called for 135,520 more folders than what was needed. The deal was then scrapped.

Did someone try to pull a fast one on the Comelec? The other day, the commissioners summoned Magdamo and Serrano, who thought they would be commended for blowing the whistle on the deal. Instead the two were berated for casting doubt on the Comelec Bids and Awards Committee, and Serrano ended up in a shouting match with Commissioner Nicodemo Ferrer.   

This is a fight the Comelec cannot win in the court of public opinion. Magdamo found public sympathy in lamenting that he thought they had saved taxpayers nearly P700 million. The elections survived without the plastic folders, with the Comelec using ordinary, cheaper ones instead. If Comelec commissioners do not want to hear criticism of their bidding committee and its head, Maria Lea Alarkon, they should turn over the investigation of this case entirely to another body. It is not a case that can be swept under the Comelec rug.