Come hell or high water, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) is standing by the supplier of the hardware and software to be used in this year’s midterm elections.

Comelec Chairman Sixto Brillantes Jr. on Friday denied that they had colluded with Smartmatic International in the compact flash (CF) cards project for the May 2013 elections.

Brillantes told the Manila Times that the CF cards project was fairly won by Smartmatic through competitive public bidding.

He also lashed back at poll body’s critics, saying that the commission expected losing bidders to doubt the results of the proceedings.

“We never had a bidding that did not have anyone questioning it. But we must also look at the people questioning it. Who are they? Personally, I believe, these are most probably just the losing bidders,” Brillantes said.

The Times reported on Friday that Comelec and Smartmatic colluded to have the CF cards project awarded to Smartmatic. It said that there was an arrangement for the failure of the first two biddings for the supply of P42 million worth of CF cards and proceed with the awarding of the contract to Smartmatic on a negotiated basis.

Earlier, the Center for People Empowerment in Governance (CenPEG) slammed Comelec for awarding the provision of CF cards project to Smartmatic-Total Information Management (TIM) despite the glitch that happened in first automated poll in the country in 2010.

In the 2010 polls, it was also Smartmatic-TIM that provided the CF cards used in each unit of the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines. But a week before the first automated polls in the country, it was learned that there was a need to replace all the CF cards because some of it triggered the PCOS machines to malfunction during the final testing and sealing.

But Brillantes said that it is only logical that the 2010 polls service provider would secure the supply of the CF cards for the 2013 elections, since the technology used by the PCOS machines is also owned by Smartmatic.

“Since Smartmatic was able to make a similarly priced bid, we would really prefer to get them. Why would we risk somebody else supplying the CF cards [for Smartmatic’s PCOS]?”  he asked.

The poll chief also assured the public that the Comelec will not allow unfair and illegal practices to happen again in the agency.

“All of our actions in the bidding of all election-related services—peripheral and other extra consumables—are all open at all levels. If we see any problem with them, we will immediately question them [Bids and Awards Committee] ourselves,” Brillantes added.