MANILA - The bidding to automate next year’s elections has been put under a cloud of doubt after it was revealed that one of the officials of the winning consortium is a consultant of a government agency that helped advise the poll body on the project.

University of the Philippines professor Harry Roque, the lead petitioner in the Supreme Court (SC) suit seeking to nullify the P7 billion contract, said Mr. Edgar Zorilla, vice president for special operations of Smartmatic International Corp., sits as consultant to the National Computer Center (NCC).

The NCC is a member of the technical evaluation group that advises Comelec on automation matters.  Its mother agency, the Commission on Information Technology and Communication (CICT), heads the Comelec Advisory Council (CAC) on automation, which is tasked to recommend to the Comelec the most appropriate, secure, applicable and cost-effective technology to be used in the automated election system.

The CAC, which is a non-voting member of the Comelec’s Special Bids and Awards committee (SBAC), recommended that the contract be awarded to Smartmatic and its Filipino partner, Total Information Management (TIM).

“How can the CICT advise the Comelec when its consultant is an officer of an interested party? At the very least, this undermines the integrity of the bidding process,” Roque said. “This is a case of conflict of interest.”

“They can also be charged for violation of the anti-graft law,” Roque added.

Abs-cbnnews.com/Newsbreak sought to contact Smartmatic spokesman Cesar Flores for comment, but he could not be reached, as of posting. We asked other members of the CAC if there was a disclosure on the part of CICT, but they could not remember.

Biased memorandum

Roque, on Tuesday, asked the SC to expunge from its records what he says is a “biased” and a “hack job” memorandum submitted by NCC director general Timoteo Diaz de Rivera. 
 
The NCC official filed with the Supreme Court a 30-page memorandum with an accompanying electronic copy in a compact disc. In his memorandum, he asked the High Court to dismiss the petition to nullify the controversial contract.
 
Diaz de Rivera has been appointed by the High Court as one of the amicus curiae  (or a friend of the Court) for the oral argument held last July 29. 

Roque and other petitioners have asked the Court to declare the automation contract invalid.

Among others, the petitioners said the Comelec did not follow the law stating that partial automation should be implemented first before a nationwide one is conducted. They also questioned some of the technical maters in the contract, which they say is unduly unfavorable to the government.

Amicus curiae not impartial

With the ties that bind Smartmatic to NCC, “the Memorandum Diaz de Rivera filed is thus not only unsolicited but above all suspect,” the petitioners said in their 9-page motion.

They cited section 36 of Rule 138 of the Revised Rules of Court that states the qualifications for an amicus curiae – that is, that he or she, must both be “experienced” and “impartial.”
 
The petitioners said Diaz de Rivera’s bias for Smarmatic became more evident when he submitted a Memorandum dated August 13, 2009 to the Supreme Court, even if the Court did not require it from him. Only the parties to the petition were asked by the High Court to submit their respective memoranda following the oral arguments.
 
Roque said the it was highly improper for the NCC to engage the services of Smartmatic while the bidding for the automation of the May 2010 elections was being held.

The  “impropriety of it all” was exacerbated when Diaz de Rivera went the “the extra mile” to push the Supreme Court to dismiss the petition against Smartmatic and TIM, submitting a memorandum when he was not even asked by the High Court to do so.

Smartmatic and its local partner TIM bested other local and foreign companies for country’s first nationwide automated elections with a bid of P7 billion. A day before the contract was awarded, Smartmatic and TIM were engaged in a nasty media war arising from “irreconcilable differences.”