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THE
Commission on Elections (Comelec) has scrapped the
planned automation of the polls in the Autonomous Region
in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) after bidders failed to comply
with some of its technical requirements.
“Instead
of automating the ARMM elections, we decided to prepare
for the 2010 elections,” said Jose Tolentino, Comelec
executive director.
Tolentino added the poll body’s bids and awards
committee (BAC) is submitting to the commission en banc
its recommendation to scrap the ARMM automation this
year owing to the failure of bidders to comply with its
technical requirements.
The
Comelec’s technical advisory council has proposed both
the direct recording electronics (DRE) and optical mark
reader (OMR) for the August 11 ARMM polls.
The DRE
was supposed to be used in scandal-prone Maguindanao
while the OMR will be implemented in other parts of the
region.
Tolentino, however, clarified that the BAC’s
recommendation is still subject to the commission’s en
banc approval.
The
South American company Smartmatic Sahl Joint Ventures
that bid for the DRE technology failed to meet the
Comelec’s technical requirements, while no bidder
qualified for the OMR system.
“Our
recommendation is to defer DRE and prepare for 2010,”
explained the Comelec official.
Elections Commissioner Rene Sarmiento said the Comelec
would not want to rush modernizing the ARMM polls in
order to avoid a repeat of the 2004 elections, where the
Supreme Court nullified its automation project for
bidding irregularities.
“We
don’t want a repeat of Mega Pacific,” he said, referring
to the consortium that won the project for P1.2 billion
and was ordered to return the money to the government.
The
company instead filed a case against the Comelec before
a lower court and asked that the poll body pay the
remaining balance for the purchase of 2,000 automated
counting machines.
The ARMM
automation could have been used to pilot-test DRE for
the 2010 presidential polls. |
