Smartmatic’s telling website: Senators’ un-liquidated funds

Elections used to cost about P2 billion. That included printing of ballots and tally forms, anti-fraud indelible ink, and allowances for hundreds of thousands of teachers who served as precinct inspectors.

The automated elections of 2010 and 2013 cost P12.5 billion. And that was for Venezuelan automation contractor Smartmatic alone. Not included were special paper, packaging, and deployment of ballots; and automation peripherals — which ran up to P4.5 billion for the two polls.

Was it worth it, given the questioned accuracy and credibility of results due to inadequate security safeguards and opaque counting?

The lease-purchase of 82,200 Smartmatic voting machines cost P9 billion. Smartmatic further billed the Comelec P1 billion for warehousing the machines, no air-conditioning, for three years.

It hired and trained 48,000 field and 600 call-center technicians, for about P2 billion in Election Weeks 2010 and 2013. Add to that about P500 million for 1,684 “totalization and consolidation” servers and printers, 164,400 compact flash cards, 48,000 transmission modems and 46,000 SIM cards, 5,000 portable and 680 fixed satellite antennas, two data centers, and the 600-seat tech-support call center.

The above services and accessories were assigned to Smartmatic, no public bidding. In some cases Smartmatic at first feigned disinterest in participating in public biddings, which the Comelec made to fail, to give way to and justify secret negotiations of prices and terms with the Venezuelan middleman.

(The breakdown of Smartmatic goods and services were posted in its website last week. The company removed it after DZMM talk show host Ted Failon cited it in asking Comelec chairman Sixto Brillantes for expense details. Failon’s staff had copied the list before its deletion.)

Separate were the billion-peso costs of logistics and consumables. Among these are: ballot paper, packaging, freight, delivery, tracking, and counter-checking of the voting machines, ballots, boxes, plastic ties, election forms, and marking pens, thermal paper; toner; stamp pads; ball pens; inedible ink; ad external rechargeable batteries.

The cartel of nine Comelec suppliers cornered most of the deals.

Separate too were the bills for printing 52 million ballots by the government’s National Printing Office, and the stipends of 233,487 public school teachers deputized for poll duty.

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Along with Smartmatic’s website list of goods and services was its boast: “Over 36,000 schools functioned as voting centers, all of which were surveyed with state-of-the-art equipment to determine quality of network signals, power availability, and other logistical concerns.”

Too: “5,000 mobile satellite antennas (BGAN) and 680 VSATs were deployed nationwide for transmission of results in the polling and totalization centers (that had) little or no cellular coverage.”

Coupled with the field ad call-center techs, the program software, and the hardware — voting machines, servers, printers, F-cards, modems, SIMs — those boasts meant this: Smartmatic was in full control of the transmission of results from precincts to central servers.

Still, 18,499 machines failed to transmit even a week after Election Day. This made up 24 percent of the votes — nine to 11 million.

Only the Comelec-Smartmatic is to blame for the large-scale voter disenfranchisement. Brillantes’ excuse — that telephone companies’ cellular signals were weak or intermittent — doesn’t wash. The telcos were assigned specific districts, towns, barrios, uplands, islands to blanket with strong, stable signals, which they did. In areas where they didn’t have cell sites, Smartmatic covered with its satellite gadgets. It flopped. Separate are the countless more ballots that Smartmatic’s machines refused to swallow, and which Brillantes baselessly blames on voter ignorance or carelessness.

Yet the Comelec has the gall to say that it ran the most successful election ever. And Smartmatic has the temerity to collect P300-million balance for the machines, and the same amount for the other supplies.

The Tagalogs have a saying: “Ang sinungaling ay kapatid ng magnanakaw (The liar is brother to the thief).”

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The senators go on misusing public funds. They have not liquidated their monthly multimillion-peso MOOE (maintenance and other operating expenses) for 2012 and the first half of 2013. They treat the money — for office rent, utilities, supplies, maintenance, repairs — like it’s theirs to spend with no accounting. They still do not submit to the Commission on Audit the detailed expenditures and official receipts.

All this is despite last January’s public furor. To recall, Alan and Pia Cayetano, Antonio Trillanes, and Miriam Santiago exposed then-Senate President Juan Ponce-Enrile’s grant to senators of “extra MOOE” as “Christmas gifts.” The MOOEs they cover with mere certifications of expense, not OR’s, under a concurrent resolution during Enrile’s tenure. Such malversation is never allowed in other government offices. Despite his exposure, Enrile arrogantly declared he is answerable to no one. The people retorted by not electing his son as senator.

The COA too was exposed then as feeble in enforcing audit rules. Only after the public outcry did it find courage to take the senators to task. Still, it compromised: it allowed mere certifications for expenses below P500,000.

Even then, the senators have not liquidated their MOOEs for the past year, moans Panfilo Lacson, chairman of the committee on accounts. Foremost of the non-liquidators were the four detractors, he says in Enrile’s defense. But making the fund abuse worrisome is that the terms of 12 of the senators will expire on June 30 (although some of them, like Alan Cayetano and Trillanes, have just been reelected). Some will stay till 2016, like Enrile, who stepped down as chamberlain because the expose supposedly has tainted his good name.

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Friends and long-time readers have been asking for a Facebook page where they easily can access past columns. One of them set this up: https://www/facebook.com/pages/Jarius-Bondoc/1376602159218459.

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Catch Sapol radio show, Saturdays, 8-10 a.m., DWIZ (882-AM).

E-mail:jariusbondoc@gmail.com