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Puzzles for the uninitiated
By: Solita Collas-Monsod
Philippine Daily Inquirer
1:02 am | Saturday, March 10th, 2012
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It must be puzzling to the uninitiated that despite its documented poor performance in the 2010
elections and the resulting complaints against it by those advocating clean, honest elections, etc.,
Smartmatic remains the Commission on Elections choice (with Commissioner Gus Lagman being
the sole dissenter) as technologypartner/provider in its election activities.
It must be equally puzzling to the uninitiated that despite the fact that Gus Lagman is the only
member of the Comelec who has IT expertise, not to mention long experience and commitment in
keeping elections clean and honest, his suggestions and recommendations keep getting shunted aside.
Only consider:
Smartmatics performance in the 2010 elections has been criticized by many. Start with the report of
the House committee on suffrage, of which its then chair, Rep. Teddy Locsin, recommended a return
to manual processes unless the shortcomings of the automated system were plugged (they havent
been). Then there is most of the IT communitye.g., the Philippine Computer Societywhich went
as far as filing criminal and administrative cases against the Comelec, Smartmatic et al. with the
Office of the Ombudsman (no response).
Add to that civil society organizations like Namfrel, Lente and CenPeg, and concerned individuals
(e.g., my husband, former Comelec Chair Christian Monsod, who delivered what was generally
considered an excellent Jaime Ongpin Memorial Lecture on the topic). Even the Comelec Advisory
Council (CAC) was criticaland recommended that Smartmatic be penalized for its shortcomings
and that its Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines not be purchased.
The only organization which continues to think that Smartmatic did a good job is the PPCRV (Parish
Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting), whose performance regarding the Random Manual Audit
was markedly less than stellar.
The irony is that Smartmatics defense has always been that it was only following the Comelecs
House majority leader denies threatening lawmaker
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orders, thus laying full blame on the poll body (with nary an objection from the latter). Which, in the
literal sense, is true, because the Comelec is in charge of elections. Except that it was clear to
everyone that the Comelec, with very little in-house capability/expertise on automation, leaned
heavily on Smartmatics advice, and was markedly partial to it.
An exaggeration? Judge for yourself: Over and above the PCOS contract, which cost about P7.2
billion, Smartmatic was awarded anotherthis time negotiatedcontract (possibly others) for P1.1
billion consisting of P376 million to supply ballot boxes and P700 million for the deployment of
ballot boxes and official ballots. Had there been bidding, Smartmatic would not have qualified,
having had no experience in these tasks.
Whats wrong with P1.1 billion? Compare this with the cost incurred by the Comelec for deploying
ballot boxes and official ballots in the barangay elections five months later: around P200 million.
Why should it cost so much more when done by Smartmatic (which just turned around and
subcontracted them) than when done by the Comelec? Even more basic, why was it given to
Smartmatic at all? The reason givenpressure of timedoesnt fly. It is unbelievable that the
Comelec would have forgotten, until the last two minutes, that ballot boxes had to be ordered and
deployed.
The reader may point out that one swallow does not a summer make. How about this? Despite those
charges and recommendations against Smartmatic, the Comelecnot the Melo Comelec, but the
Brillantes Comelecstill decided that it would use Smartmatic and its PCOS machines for the then
upcoming ARMM elections in 2011, for P880 millionP130 million for the purchase of 4,000
PCOS machines and P750 million for technology-related services.
This is the situation that Gus Lagman found when he joined the Comelec as commissioner. Gus, an
IT expert who headed Namfrel Quick Count since its inception, was horrified, probably not only
because Smartmatic was still going to be involved in elections after its many booboos, but also
because it was getting a contract at very favorable expenditure ratios: With about 1 million voters,
the Comelec would be paying Smartmatic about P880 for every voter in the ARMM. That is six
times what the Comelec paid Smartmatic (P7.2 billion for 50 million voters) for similar services in
2010.
Naturally, Gus, now the resident Comelec IT expert, opposed itbut he lost by a vote of 6-1 (there
are seven Comelec commissioners). It may have been a blessing in disguise that the ARMM
elections were postponed.
That was the first defeat Gus suffered in the Comelec. Another was the Consolidation and
Canvassing System (CCS), which had been outsourced to the vendor for the 2008 ARMM elections
and the 2010 automated elections. Gus asked the Comelecs IT department if they could develop
their own CCS, and the answer was an emphatic yes.
The project was completed on time, for P1 million. How much did Smartmatic charge for its CCS?
P58 million. One would have thought that the in-house project would have been accepted with open
arms. And one would have been wrong. Ironically, the PPCRV representative in the CAC (former
Commissioner Gregorio Larrazabal, who worked hand in glove with Smartmatic) posed strong
objections, saying that the technology was untried (a ridiculous comment, because the technology is
nothing but laptops, PCs, servers and standard communication facilities). And again, apparently,
Gus colleagues turned Gus project down.
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