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By Lakambini A. Sitoy, Reporter
First of four parts
In the 1990s the idea of fully computerized
elections was an appealing one. It was the decade when vast amounts
of information were suddenly available through the Internet.
Computerization and networking of government offices were being
heralded as the modern solution to red tape and long queues.
Although the United States elections are fully
computerized, the technology is not without its detractors. Critics
of automation have argued that the systems are vulnerable to hackers
if placed online or through physical interference with the machines.
Politicians have been linked to the companies that produce the
counting machines or developed the systems and software.
Automation has not gained absolute currency even
in developed or First-World countries. According to the
International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, the
United Kingdom has started to experiment with vote-counting machines
in some districts.
In Turkey most of the voting is done by machine,
while in Belgium and the Netherlands approximately half the votes
are counted automatically. In Switzerland a first count is done by
hand, then the votes are counted by machines.
Norway, Germany and Brazil have partly used
technology in elections, and India employed machines to count about
20 percent of its votes in its latest elections.
Indonesia, in its first direct presidential
election held last month, counted the votes by machine, and then
verified the returns through a manual count.
Canada, Australia, Ireland, Spain, Italy,
France, Portugal, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Malaysia and Russia
continue to count their votes by hand.
But inspired by the example of a handful of
developed countries, the Philippine Congress in 1995 authorized the
Commission on Elections to conduct a nationwide demonstration of a
computerized election system to be pilot-tested in the following
year’s elections in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao.
Plans for automating the 1998 national and local
elections were laid by December 22, 1997, through congressional
authorization, but the Comelec eventually decided to limit
automation to the ARMM.
Results of the May 2001 elections were counted
manually, but the Comelec had not given up on the idea of
automation.
Modernization gone wrong
In October 2002 it adopted a modernization
program for the 2004 elections. Three phases made up the Automated
Election System: 1) voter registration and validation, which
involved cleaning up and updating the list of voters through
capturing voters’ biometrics and personal data, 2) automated
counting and canvassing, and 3) electronic transmission.
Total budget allocation for the modernization
program was P3 billion. President Arroyo allocated, by way of
executive order, P2.5 billion on January 24, 2003; at the request of
the Comelec, she authorized the release of P500 million more.
Phase 2 of the project was awarded to Mega
Pacific Consortium in a transaction currently being reviewed by the
Senate blue-ribbon committee.
Phase 1 and Phase 3 of the project were also
controversial. Phase 1 was awarded to the French company Sagem SA, a
company that, according to the Commission on Audit, was not eligible
to bid for the project, because it failed the eligibility criteria
that a company must be 60 percent Filipino-owned. After announcing
this criterion on its invitation to bid, the Comelec passed a
resolution changing the eligibility criteria, a decision that was
not fair, the Commission on Audit said in a statement.
Phase 3 was awarded to Multi-Media Systems Inc.
for P298,375,808.90, of which more than P260 million has been paid.
The Comelec was supposed to lease Dream VSAT satellite transmission
equipment from the company, for electronically conveying election
results. But two days before the May 10 national and local
elections, the Supreme Court barred the Comelec from using the
system, pending resolution of a case accusing the poll body of
violating an election code provision requiring a 30-day notice on
the use of new technology before an election.
Phase 2
The Comelec was determined to carry out Phase 2
in the 2004 polls. On January 28, 2003, it issued an invitation to
apply for eligibility and to bid. Single companies or
“manufacturers, suppliers and/or distributors forming themselves
into a joint venture” were eligible.
The criteria were further clarified on February
11. A Comelec resolution stated that bidders had to prove a “track
record,” in which their counting machines should have been used in
at least one political exercise with at least 20 million voters. For
verification of voters, the bidders had to show “a reference site
of an existing data base installation using Automated Fingerprint
Identification System with at least twenty million” entries.
In the weeks leading up to this stage, the
Comelec consulted with several agencies, including the Department of
Science and Technology, and the private sector, to determine what
standards of performance it should set for the machines and
technology it needed.
By February 17, 2003, the Comelec was ready, and
released a “request for proposal” to get the election automation
machines. It specified the procedure to be used in the public
bidding for the contract.
The procedure
The bidding was to be conducted according to a
“two-envelope/two-stage system.”
The first envelope was to contain documents
establishing the bidder’s eligibility to bid and its
qualifications to perform the contract if accepted. The second
envelope would be the bid itself.
Grades of pass or fail determined bidder
eligibility. A prospective bidder who passed the legal, technical
and financial requirements was considered eligible. But if it failed
in any requirement, its bid was dismissed.
If one or more of the required documents was
missing, the bid was to be rated failed.
The technical envelopes of those bidders which
had passed or exceeded the passing score were to be opened next.
Only bids that were determined to contain all the bid requirements
for both components were to be rated passed and considered for
comparison.
Deadline for the receipt of the bids was March
5.
The result
Out of 57 bidders the Comelec found Mega Pacific
Consortium and the Total Information Management Corp. eligible.
The next stage, termed “postqualification,”
would determine whether the selected bidders had what it took to
satisfactorily conduct automated elections. The Comelec’s Bids and
Awards Committee (BAC) was to examine the documentary evidence they
had submitted and make a decision based on each bidder’s
financial, technical and production capabilities or resources.
The Comelec had already stipulated in its
request for proposal that a bid that did not meet its standards
would be rejected. Any shortcomings could not be corrected by the
bidder after the fact.
But the Comelec could also waive an aspect of
the bid that did not conform to its standards so long as it did not
constitute a “material deviation”—provided the waiver would
not affect the relative ranking of the bidder.
The two contenders, MPC and TIMC, were referred
to the BAC’s Technical Working Group and the Department of Science
and Technology for evaluation.
Both bidders got a number of failed marks in the
technical evaluation, according to the DOST. But these were not in
exactly the same categories. Nonetheless, the Comelec decided, en
banc, to award the contract to Mega Pacific Consortium. Resolution
6074 to this effect was promulgated on April 15, 2003, and
publicized on May 16, 2003.
However, it was with “Mega Pacific eSolutions,
Inc.,” a company that joined the bidding but did not meet the
eligibility requirements, that the Comelec signed the contract for
Phase 2. The contract did not indicate an exact date of execution,
only that this was done in May. But it was notarized on June 30,
2003, documents at the Supreme Court said.
The case
Five individuals and entities wrote a letter on
May 29, 2003, to Comelec Chair Benjamin Abalos Sr., protesting the
decision on the ground of irregularities in the bidding. Citing
noncompliance with the eligibility requirements, as well as
technical and procedural requirements, they sought a new bidding.
The Comelec rejected the protest in a June 6,
2003, letter. So on August 6 the protesters petitioned the Supreme
Court for certiorari—a remedy sought for “grave abuse of
discretion” by a public office in the exercise of its duties.
The Court granted the petition. Following the
receipt of oral arguments and pleadings, on January 13, 2004, it
handed down its damning decision, G.R. No. 159139. The Comelec’s
award of the Phase Two contract to Mega Pacific Consortium was
illegal, it said: “a clear violation of law and jurisprudence.”
Rendered “in reckless disregard of [the Comelec’s] own bidding
rules and procedure.”
The Court found that the contract had been
awarded to a company that had not even participated in the bidding,
in the process violating the requirements of R.A. 8436, the law
authorizing the Comelec to use an automated election system, as well
as those set forth in the Comelec’s request for proposal.
It noted, too, that the award to MPC had been
performed with undue haste—coming a week before the Comelec had
received a report and recommendations from the Bids and Awards
Committee.
The two bidders that were considered eligible
failed the technical tests conducted by the Department of Science
and Technology. The Comelec should have declared the bidding a
failure and conducted a rebidding.
The contract was thus nullified.
The latest word was that the Office of the
Ombudsman has given due course to the criminal complaint against the
commissioners of the Comelec and several individuals involved in the
procurement of automated counting machines intended for use in the
2004 elections.
The Ombudsman’s order was based on the
decision of the Supreme Court on January 13, 2004, and on the
documented complaint filed by the Bantay Katarungan and Kilosbayan
led by its president Rafael M. Alunan and former Senate president
Jovito R. Salonga.
(To be continued)
Part 1 |Part
3 |Part 4 |
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