Waste

Last Saturday, the second bidding for the contract to refurbish 81,896 PCOS machines in Comelec warehouses was declared a failure. It now seems government will have to cough up a lot more money to conduct automated polls next year.

 In the first round of bidding, potential service providers refused to participate because the P2 billion the Comelec offered was simply too low to get the job done. In the second round, Comelec raised the offer to P3.1 billion, hoping to attract qualified bidders.

This time, however, two of the bidders (Smartmatic-TIM and Miru Sytems Co.) manifested their withdrawal from the process. The two companies said there simply was no material time to refurbish the machines.

The third bidder, a consortium led by Dermalog Identification Systems GmbH, did submit a bid. The consortium was, however, disqualified by the special bids and awards committee on four adverse counts including failure to demonstrate financial capacity to undertake the project. While the third bidder has the right to file a motion for reconsideration, the infirmities found by the bids committee appear incurable.

Meanwhile, time is quickly running out.

It turns out, refurbishing the machines in storage is not a simple feat. Each machine will need to be upgraded. The whole lot will need to be sent to the manufacturer in China. Spare parts will have to be procured from the original suppliers. The machines will need to be dissembled and then assembled again with the parts replacements. The transport and repair will likely require more time than what we have left before the May 2016 elections.

The process might commenced many months ago had Comelec moved with a little more urgency and had there not been so many legal obstacles thrown up by groups proposing an alternative system. Now we are in a major predicament.

For the 2016 electoral exercise, we need about 100,000 PCOS machines to feasibly accommodate the number of voters. Last week, the Comelec finally declared Smartmatic the winning bidder to supply 23,000 new machines. However, the notice of award will not be handed out by the Comelec until the poll body settles the issue of refurbishing the 81,896 machines in storage.

Unless the old machines are upgraded, the entire lot might not be able to operate coherently. So in the meantime, Smartmatic sits idly by until given notice to proceed with the acquisition of the new machines.

The greater likelihood at this point is that Comelec might be constrained to order the entire lot of 100,000 new machines because there is no time to refurbish the old ones (assuming some supplier has this great number of machines ready to be delivered).

A supplemental budget might have to be requested for this.

Purchase of 82,000 new machines (in addition to the 23,000 already awarded) will cost about P7.8 billion. Had the contract for refurbishment been awarded last May, the cost for upgrading the machines in storage would only have been P2.5 billion.

An additional P4.7 billion (to be added to the P3.1 billion budgeted for refurbishment) will now be needed to put together the 100,000 brand new PCOS machines needed. That is a large sum of money, enough to end the misery endured by the Yolanda victims. What a waste.

The situation faced by Comelec at this time is pretty dire. This should not have happened if the anti-automation groups with their self-serving agendas not entangled the process.

Help

Joaquin Maria “Chino” Gutierrez is a truly gifted Filipino classical violinist at par with the best in the world.

The 25-year-old prodigy is currently completing his bachelors degree at the prestigious Munich State Academy for Music and Theater, honing his talents with the best in the world. Last year, Chino was invited by the renowned Russian violinist to be part of the master class held in Beijing. Last June, he was selected to participate in the Kronberg Academy Master Course to train under the world’s best pedagogues.

At moment, Chino is in Israel as a participant in the Keshet Elion International Violin Master course. He is the only Filipino ever to be invited to this prestigious course.

A few months ago, Chino submitted recordings of his music to the Joseph Joachim International Violin Competition. From over 200 contestants, Chino was selected to be among the 39 artists to be considered for the final selection process.

His education at Munich and his participation in the various master courses entail large costs. The small band of supporters who helped raise money for his training in Germany are running out of funds themselves.

Unfortunately for Chino, we have a government that has no interest in supporting musicians – or for that matter, talented athletes. The young virtuoso will have to rely entirely on the generosity of private sector patrons.

I am not sure about the feasibility of crowd-sourcing the funds needed to enable Chino to complete his education in Munich and participate in forthcoming master courses with the best in the world. To be sure, we will be badgering some of our wealthier friends to help raise the funds to support this genius of humble roots.

While it is true that one is born with genius, it costs a bit to polish the skills to make that genius shine.

This is a call for help. We need to raise the funds to help Chino complete his education and compete at the highest level with the world’s best.

Those inclined to support this truly exceptional talent might get in touch with Bel Olivares-Cunanan or Ching Montinola.