Political parties, candidates, and other election stakeholders worried at how credible the 2013 mid-term polls will be should take a second look at the preparations being made. Many of them will be surprised to know – or perhaps not at all – at the way election preparations are being botched by Smartmatic and how the whole exercise has become yet again a money-making business.
Comelec is treading on legal danger zones for insisting on using Smartmatic’s PCOS machines despite the termination by the U.S.-based Dominion Voting Systems (DVS) of its licensing agreement with Smartmatic last May 23. The licensing agreement (2009) allowed Smartmatic, a Venezuelan marketing company, to sub-license for Comelec the DVS-owned election technology only for the 2010 automated polls. Its termination closes Smartmatic’s access to the program system as a result of which it is unable to correct program bugs and errors that it finally admitted in 2011 but which the company is under obligation to remedy under a purchase agreement involving some 80,000 PCOS machines. A lawsuit is now pending between Smartmatic and DVS at the Delaware chancery court (U.S.) which could further mess up the coming elections in the Philippines.
There are thus glaring problems in the coming May 2013 mid-term elections, particularly: First, Comelec will be using not only a pirated technology but a system that is full of programming errors and other defects. Second, the non-compliance with the election modernization law (RA 9369) that was 2010 that is largely ignored by Congress will be repeated in 2013 so that the minimum system requirements (such as voter verifiability, source code review, digital signature) for a transparent, secure, and accurate technology will remain disabled. And third, are counting discrepancies and other inaccuracies as explained earlier.
This week, Congress through the Joint Congressional Oversight Committee (JCOC) on the automated election system was asked by the citizens’ election watchdog AES Watch to probe into reports of “unconscionable” expenditures or excessive overpricing in the bidding procedures of Comelec. (“Unconscionable,” according to the Commission on Audit, is “overpricing in significant amounts exceeding 100% of the current and prevailing market value.”) One case, as cited by former Comelec lawyer and whistleblower Melchor Magdamo, is the alleged overpricing in election paraphernalia deployment amounting to PhP2.3 billion. In 2010, Magdamo reports, deployment cost PhP1 billion and was directly awarded to Smartmatic without bidding. Other unconscionable expenditures involve warehouse lease (PhP400M) and ballot plastic package (PhP291.6M compared with PhP175M in 2010), the lawyer said.
The only IT Comelec commissioner, Gus Lagman, with the support of the poll body’s IT department succeeded in developing a consolidated and canvassing system (CCS) for the 2013 elections. The project cost PhP600,000 compared with Smartmatic’s CCS at PhP58M (2010). Lagman’s output will never be used and, worse, he was never reappointed by Malacanang.
Has poll automation become a mere money-making business and not a system designed by law to enhance election modernization? Has the country’s sovereign electoral exercise been privatized to satisfy corporate greed and others out to make profit?