Despite the clamor from the President, the opposition and poll watchdog groups, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) seems eager to retain the use of its technology provider, Smartmatic, which has had a less than sterling track record over four automated elections dating back to 2010.
The last midterm elections in May were marred by several hundreds of malfunctioning vote-counting machines (VCMs) that the government had purchased from Smartmatic for P2.2 billion.
Even worse, a glitch delayed the transmission of results by seven hours, casting doubts on the credibility of the elections. These were the same machines used in the previous election that had been leased from Smartmatic for more than P8 billion in 2016.
In that same year, Smartmatic was accused of changing the script in Comelec servers while they were transmitting results for the 2016 presidential elections, sparking suspicions that the results were being massaged.
The technical glitches in the 2019 midterm elections were such that there was a rare agreement among the administration, the opposition and poll watchdogs that Smartmatic must go.
Yet, a spokesman for the poll body said the Comelec needs a legal basis to ban any supplier, suggesting that Smartmatic would again be able to bid for the 2022 presidential election.
While allowing that the President’s suggestion “deserves a lot of serious consideration,” Comelec spokesman James Jimenez also said the agency operates under Commission on Audit rules that require public bidding.
“We are not averse to inviting local suppliers but the problem that we encountered over the past nine years is that local suppliers simply do not have the required experience,” Jimenez added.
“There’s nothing preventing local suppliers from joining the bidding but to limit the options to just local suppliers might not be the best solution nor might it be legal," he added.
These remarks betray a bias in more ways than one.
First, given the many attendant problems experienced with Smartmatic over the last two elections, there should be no legal impediment to barring it from future contracts on the basis of their poor performance. Common sense would dictate that one no longer gives business to a supplier that fails to deliver to everyone’s satisfaction.
Second, to say that local suppliers simply do not have the required experience is patently unfair to these companies, given that the poll body has allowed the Venezuelan company to monopolize the business for the last four elections. How will local suppliers ever get the experience they need, if their own government will not grant them the contracts to gain that experience and sticks instead with a problematic foreign supplier?
The Comelec may be an independent commission, but it is accountable to the people nonetheless. We deserve better and more credible elections—certainly better and more credible than what Smartmatic has provided.
