BAGUIO CITY—The Supreme Court on Tuesday unanimously struck down the P268.8-million contract entered into by the Commission on Elections, (Comelec) and Smartmatic-Total Information Management (TIM) for being illegal.
SC Spokesman Theodore Te said the justices granted the consolidated petition filed by the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) and the Automated Election System (AES) Watch, led by Bishop Broderick Pabillo, seeking to scrap the midnight deal.
Te said the Court held that Comelec Resolution 9922, which awarded to Smartmatic the contract for the diagnosis and minor repair services for 80,000 Precinct Count Optical Scan (Pcos) machines to be used in 2016 elections, as well as the extended warranty contract given to the company, violates several laws.
“It is clear that the Comelec committed grave abuse of discretion and, thus, its Resolution 9922 and the Extended Warranty Program [Part 1] should be stricken down and, necessarily, all amounts paid to Smartmatic-TIM pursuant to said contract, if any, being public funds should be returned to the government,” the Court ruled.
The SC ruled that the Comelec failed to justify its resort to direct contracting with Smartmatic-TIM under Section 50, Article XVI of the Government Procurement Reform Act (GPRA).
The Comelec earlier said that it chose to approve Smartmatic’s extended-warranty proposal, instead of conducting a public bidding, owing to “tight time schedule” in the preparations for the 2016 elections if public bidding were to be conducted.
The poll body also reasoned out that it would be “too great a risk” to give the refurbishment and repair of the PCOS machines to any third party other than Smartmatic, considering the highly technical nature of the refurbishment and repairs of the machines.
The Court ruled that the Comelec failed to show that any of the condition under Section 50, Article XVI of the GPRA existed.
It added that the Comelec’s claims of impracticality were not supported by any independently verifiable data and its perceived “warranty extension” is, in reality, a circumvention of the procurement law.
The IBP and the AES, in their consolidated petitions, argued that the Pcos machines repair-contract blatantly violated Republic Act 9184, or the GPRA.