Atty. Helen Aguila Flores, Chairman of COMELEC Bids and Awards Committee (UNTV News)
MANILA, Philippines – There is no such ploy…
This was the pronouncement of the Bids and Awards Committee (BAC) denying speculations that there is a plan to eventually grant to Smartmatic the right to supply additional OMR voting machines under a negotiated contract.
BAC stood firm that the ongoing bidding process is consistent with the procurement law.
The bid process states that if 2 rounds of bidding fails then a government agency may enter into a negotiated contract.
“There is no such ploy as far as this committee is concern. I can only answer for this committee. All of our actions, our decisions, our processes are based on the law,” Atty. Helen Aguila Flores, Chairman of COMELEC Bids and Awards Committee said.
“You will see from our decisions that many of our decisions are not favorable to any of the parties. That is very clear from our decisions. If there is such ploy it would have been seen in our decisions,” she added.
The BAC has already started the 2nd round of bidding for 23,000 OMR and 410 units of DRE voting machines.
This, after the 1st round of bidding failed.
In the pre-bid conference conducted by the BAC, the committee stated that no company as of today bought bid documents for OMR machines and only a single company acquired bid documents for DRE machines.
Smartmatic said they will first await the decision of their petition raised before the COMELEC en banc seeking a reversal of the Bids and Awards Committee’s ruling disqualifying them.
The BAC said, the en banc’s decision might affect the second round of bidding.
“For example the Commission En Banc would issue a final decision reversing our decision then we will have to proceed on to post qualification going back to the 1st round. We have to abandon the 2nd round to proceed, to continue the 1st round,” Flores said.
The COMELEC en banc is expected to tackle the petition in its session on Tuesday.
(Victor Cosare / UNTV News)