Expect Smartmatic to corner more contracts after PCOS

After pretending to study two better, cheaper local versions, the Comelec did what graft-busters expected it to. It bought first 23,000, then 71,000 new vote-counting machines from powerful Venezuelan seller Smartmatic Corp. Were kickbacks from the P10.3-billion deal too tempting?

Smartmatic’s sway over the Comelec came after the entry of a new chairman and two commissioners. Past chairmen and commissioners also had acted as Smartmatic sales agents.

In the 2008 election at the Muslim Autonomous Region, Smartmatic was assigned to automate one of the five provinces. It failed to transmit 35 percent of the precinct results to the canvassing centers, recalls Ernie del Rosario, then-head of the Comelec info-tech department. That should have been enough to blacklist Smartmatic from the Comelec bidding in 2009 for nationwide poll automation. Besides, it was unqualified because: (1) not the developer-owner of the precinct count optical scanner (PCOS) that it was selling, (2) no experience in large-scale contract, and (3) its product conked out during the demo. Yet Smartmatic bagged the P9-billion lease of 74,000 units, plus billions more in backups, accessories, and warehousing.

Well reported is how the PCOS failed in the dry run a week before Election Day 2010. Compact flash cards had to be reprogrammed and replaced. The count rated only 99.6-percent, meaning hundreds of thousands of uncounted and miscounted votes, way below the Automation Law’s tolerable 99.995-percent accuracy, or only one mistake per 20,000 marks. Too, a 2012 lawsuit in the US clearly showed that Dominion Election Systems of Canada was the true PCOS developer-owner, and Smartmatic merely its dealer. Still the then-new chairman and commissioners ignored the disqualifying factors. For billions of pesos more, they bought the leased PCOS and increased the units to 82,000.

Half of the demo units failed during the dry run a week before Election 2013. On the big day the Comelec public website showed an incredible 12 million votes counted within only two hours of the close of precincts. A Smartmatic technician revised the results – a crime under the Omnibus Election Code. The PCOS failed to transmit and canvass 24 percent of the precinct count. The Comelec covered up by declaring six of 12 senatorial winners after counting only 42 percent of the votes, and the other six after 58 percent.

Today, despite two disqualifications for defective submissions and products, Smartmatic was let by the Comelec en banc to bid and win the 94,000 new PCOS. The 82,000 old ones, which has cost the country P16 billion for only two elections, will be mothballed.

Expect Smartmatic to corner other billion-peso Comelec contracts. It will maneuver to block any competitor-supplier of election automation systems.

Smartmatic already was able to get rid of Spain’s Indra Sistemas. Indra had won the P2.9-billion contract for the voter verification system (VVS). Smartmatic hated that the contract gained Indra a foothold into the Comelec automation. By some machination, it got the Comelec to junk the VVS altogether – and to realign its budget to buy the 94,000 new PCOS, for which the funds were at first short.

So now, despite Comelec calls for 4.5 million voters to have their biometrics taken, and for 5.5 million others to claim their biometric ID cards, there won’t be a VVS on Election Day 2016 to check if they’re who they say they are.

Indra then made a bid and won the transmission contract for P552.4 million. Smartmatic had not participated, saying the Comelec’s maximum budget of P558 million was too low and unprofitable.

Like the PCOS purchases, this transmission contracting follows closely the pattern in Election 2013, says Leo Querubin, past president of the Philippine Computer Society. That year Smartmatic also had found the transmission budget of P400 million too low, so did not bid. The Comelec found a way to scuttle the public bidding, then strike a deal with Smartmatic behind closed doors – for a higher P494 million.

Yet, letting election systems providers like Smartmatic or Indra handle the transmission is a conflict of interest, says Nelson Celis, another PCS past president. Bidders should be local telecoms firms that know the situation on the ground. Besides, the Comelec need not spend hundreds of millions of pesos on transmission. The Constitution empowers it to deputize government instrumentalities. For transmission, it can use the Armed Forces communications equipment and the National Power Corp. electric cables.

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Resistance to dirty mining around Luzon’s bio-resource-rich Verde Passage has solidified. Due to public outcry, the town council of Lobo, Batangas, revoked its consent to open-pit gold mining by an Australian-Canadian firm. The townsfolk wrote their political leaders to preserve Verde Passage as the “center of the center of Asia-Pacific marine biodiversity.” That is, as food source for this part of the globe.

Researchers say the triangle formed by the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia hosts the most varieties of flora and fauna – that balance the ecology and feed hundreds of millions of people. The “center of that center” is Verde Passage, the water channel between Batangas, Mindoro, Marinduque, and Romblon. The waters and islands are rich food sources. Cyanide and goldmine tailings would poison the farms, rivers, and seas that nourish Filipinos, Malaysians, and Indonesians with fish and shells.

Laws and presidential edicts task the Dept. of Environment and Natural Resources to protect Verde Passage. Yet it endorsed the open-pit mine, which would sap Lobo’s waterfalls of 800,000 tons of water per day and dynamite the hillsides. Promises of a few dozen jobs as mine facility guards, janitors, and canteen busboys fooled penurious villagers into consenting. But environment-conscious residents and expert outsiders set them aright. ABS-CBN Bantay Kalikasan founder Gina Lopez told them about the misery that other Luzon towns suffered -- sickness, lost forests, muddied waterways, dirty air -- when they allowed mining. Top-notch broadcaster Ted Failon’s coverage globalized the issue, inciting people to sign petitions against the madness.

Catholic Archbishop Ramon Arguelles, priests, and nuns were among the first to lend support to the Lobo cause. Soon followed Batangas Gov. Vilma Santos and Vice Gov. Mark Leviste. Too, brothers Gov. Alfonso Umali and Rep. Reynaldo Umali of Mindoro Oriental, with Rep. Salvador Leachon; and Gov. Carmencita Reyes and Rep. Regina Reyes of Marinduque. The DENR is now isolated in pushing for the foreign exploiters of Philippine natural resources.

Lobo resident Atty. Linda Jimeno points out that a big majority of miners in the Philippines are Canadians and Australians. Canada has a land area of 99.8 million hectares, and Australia 76.8 million hectares; both are continental masses that can sustain mining. Whereas, the Philippines has only 30 million hectares, scattered over 7,107 islands whose puny ecosystems cannot survive mining.

Yet Canadians and Australians choose to mine in the Philippines, says Jimeno, former president of the Philippine Bar Association. That’s because in their homeland the mining laws are strict, taxes are high, and corruption guarantees jailing. In the Philippines, the environment officials no less endorse pollutive mines, excise tax is only two percent, and permits can be obtained for a fistful of pesos.

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