Comelec must now buy leased voting machines
The Comelec is under obligation to buy, even if unnecessary, the 97,366 voting machines that it leased in the May 2016 elections. The poll body needlessly will spend P2,078,304,225.76 to buy the machines. That’s on top of the P8 billion it already shelled out for the lease.
The forced purchase is because the Comelec failed to return the machines to the lessor on the deadline date of Dec. 1, 2016.
The Venezuelan lessor Smartmatic Corp. has begun the legal process to enforce the purchase and collect the P2.078 billion. In such event, the Comelec will be stuck with 97,366 machines that it may never use again. That’s in addition to 86,200 older machines, now warehoused, that the Comelec also bought from Smartmatic for the 2010 and 2013 elections. The warehousing of those older units costs the Comelec P400 million a year.
This is another case of criminal negligence, critics say. They liken it to the Comelec’s website laxity that enabled hackers to steal last Mar. the confidential personal data of 55 million voters.
The Smartmatic contract gives the Comelec up to a year after the election, or May 10, 2017, to decide whether to purchase the leased machines. But then, the Comelec tied itself to a forcedpurchase proviso for unreturned units five-and-a-half months ahead.
That Section 6.9 states: “All goods still in the possession of Comelec as of 01 December 2016 because of any election contest or audit requirement shall be considered sold to Comelec pursuant to its option to purchase under this contract, and the Comelec shall pay the corresponding price in accordance with the financial proposal within ten (10) working days from receipt by Comelec of the invoice from the Provider covering the said goods, without prejudice to Comelec requiring the protestant to shoulder such costs.”
The Comelec had released before Dec. 1 only 151 of the 97,517 units originally leased for P8 billion for the 2016 balloting. The 97,366-balance remains locked up in its warehouse in Laguna. So Smartmatic considers those units sold to Comelec for an additional P2.078 billion.
The Comelec has been wishy-washy. It tried to beat the Dec. 1-deadline by notifying Smartmatic on Nov. 28 to retrieve the 97,366 units. But twice thereafter it forbade the lessor from doing so, invoking a pending electoral protest.
It had held on to the 97,517 original units due to two protests. One, at the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (Supreme Court), was by Bongbong Marcos, against Vice Presidential winner Leni Robredo. The other, at the Senate Electoral Tribunal, was by Francis Tolentino, against tail-ender Leila de Lima. In the latter case, the Comelec secured a ruling from the SET to make Tolentino pay P3,315,785.36 for the 151 affected units. It failed to get the same from the PET, as Marcos opposed the release of the 97,366-balance, costing P2.078 billion, covered by his protest.
Smartmatic had reminded Comelec in July of the Dec. 1 return deadline. It received on Nov. 29 the Comelec’s Nov. 28 notice to pull out the 97,366 machines. On Dec. 3 Smartmatic went to the Comelec warehouse to inspect and pack up, but was barred entry. Smartmatic returned on Dec. 7; again it was told that the units could not be released due to the pending protest at the PET.
Marcos contends that Robredo’s Liberal Party conspired with Smartmatic to steal millions of his votes. His protest was triggered by the altering, by Smartmatic’s Philippine head, of entries in the Comelec’s vote tally server in the wee hours of the morning after the counting commenced. The Comelec hastily had dismissed the alterations as “cosmetic,” with no effect on the tally. The PET has yet to rule on that.
Pointing them out to be all lawyers, critics ask why the Comelec chairman and six commissioners consented to the purchase lock-in. The agency also had wasted tens of millions in additional Smartmatic charges to equip the machines with voter receipts, critics recount. Smartmatic’s original product demos already included the receipt feature, so there shouldn’t have been any extra charge.
Information technologists and political scientists had opposed the use of the inaccurate, unreliable, costly machines, to begin with. The now cashiered 86,200 units had cost P9 billion to purchase, P3 billion to accessorize, and P2.8 billion to warehouse since 2009. The 97,517 new units were acquired not by public bidding but closed-door negotiation. On top of the P8-billion lease and forthcoming P2.078-billion purchase balance, the Comelec spent P2 billion to accessorize and P500 million to warehouse for the 2016 balloting alone. The computer and social scientists had wanted the automation only of the provincial-city-national canvassing, prone to massive “dagdagbawas” ( vote padding- shaving), but retain manual balloting and counting at precincts. Comelec has refused.
Last Dec. the Comelec was named “election commission of the year” and feted for “election management” by an International Center for Parliamentary Studies. Held in Mozambique, the awards were sponsored by Smartmatic.
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The poll body must pay P2 billion since the units are deemed sold – on top of P8 billion earlier shelled out for the lease.