THE Commission on Elections (Comelec) is facing another controversy for allowing French firm Safran Morpho and Comfac Corp. to continue participating in the bidding process for the supply of the P727-million Voter Verification System (VVS) of the poll body, despite its failure to perform a demonstration of its machine at the close of the submission of bids last week.
Sources at the Comelec said the joint venture of French firm Safran Morpho and Comfac Corp. is allegedly fronting for a former official of the poll body and another technology provider to ensure that the tandem corners all contracts related to preparations for the 2016 elections.
The Comelec’s Bids and Awards Committee (BAC) found Morpho to have submitted the lowest calculated bid of close to P500 million.
“Despite being a first-time participant in the local election automation, Morpho apparently has an inside track at the Comelec and the BAC which explains why it easily breezed through the bidding process,” one Comelec source said.
The source also observed the BAC’s undue preference for the French company based on its ruling.
For instance, the source said, a bidder filed a motion seeking the disqualification of the Morpho joint venture for submitting incomplete requirements on March 11, particularly the soft copies of both the technical documentation and the source code, in accordance to the BAC’s bid bulletin released on February 16.
Another source noted how the Safran-Comfac JV also failed to bring its VVS equipment during the preliminary bid submission as required by the Comelec through Bid Bulletin No. 3.
However, the source said, BAC Chairman Helen Aguila-Flores apparently dismissed the apparent violation by Morpho and Comfac despite the protest registered by counsels of other bidders.
“Legal counsel for Safran-Comfac said the VVS unit was not included in their copy of the requirement checklist to which Chairperson Flores apologized for the confusion the committee has caused for the conflicting requirement checklist,” a portion of the BAC ruling read.
Another questionable move by the BAC, according to the same sources, was to disallow other bidders and observers from participating in post-qualification proceedings.
The BAC granted the Morpho-Comfac JV’s request to prohibit other bidders from observing the testing and demonstration of the VVS, that was to be held a week after the submission of bids on grounds of confidentiality.
Previously, the sources said, all bidders were allowed to observe and participate in the initial demonstration for the Optical Mark Reader (OMR).
They noted that Smartmatic and its competitor in the OMR bidding Indra Sistemas SA were required to do a demonstration of its OMR technology in front of the BAC, the media, and observers to show the capabilities of the machines and how they worked.
It was provided for in the Manual of Procedures for the Procurement of Goods and Services, Comelec insiders said.
Early this week the Supreme Court stopped the P268.8-million deal between the Comelec and Smartmatic for the repair of the 80,000 Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines for violating the government procurement law.
Along with other watchdog groups, C3E assailed Smartmatic’s violations of the automated election laws, and demanded that the company be blacklisted from doing election-related activities for having misrepresented itself and claiming it owned the automated-election technology and that it was the manufacturer of the PCOS machines.