FOUR days before the elections, the Commission on Elections decided to lease 1,000 more Broadband Global Area Network or BGAN channels to further speed up the transmission of the vote results.
Comelec commissioner Rowena Guanzon said the Commission en banc had decided at the last minute to lease of “hundreds of millions” worth of BGANs, awarding a direct contract “with condition” to its technology provider Smartmatic-Total Information Management.
Voting 5-1-1, Comelec Chairman Andres Bautista, Commissioners Christian Robert Lim, Arthur Lim, Sheriff Abas and Al Pareño voted in favor of direct contracting the lease to Smartmatic while Rowena Guanzon dissented and Luie Guia abstained.
“I voted against direct contracting because we need to bid that out, we are talking about big money, hundreds of millions worth,” Guanzon told the reporters on Thursday.
Guanzon said she asked Smartmatic why they advised them this late, but the technical provider said they sent the letter last March.
“They said they wrote us, they probably wrote the directors. I did not know about that, they said that they wrote as early as March to inform the commission that they will need many more BGANs,” Guanzon said.
She said she was never aware of the letter of request and maintained that the Comelec should follow the procurement law.
“They say they can transmit faster if they have more. I said I have a problem, you know, when it comes to spending people’s money. I really have to follow the procurement law,” Guanzon said.
She said Lim might have voted for the direct contracting but asked Smartmatic to submit first a notarized certification that they were the exclusive supplier.
“Even if they are the exclusive supplier, the bids and awards committee has to determine if they will recommend. It’s not as easy as if we vote on it now, we can buy tomorrow. It’s not that way. That’s not how the government procurement law works,” she said.
Guanzon said although they had already voted on and approved the direct contracting, they could not implement it since there was no resolution yet or an order from Bautista.
Bautista on Wednesday was on an official visit to Legazpi.
A Comelec insider said the poll body was supposed to have a morning en banc meeting on Thursday but moved it to 3 p.m. because Bautista was still on the way back to Manila.