“Our Supreme Court deemed the Miru-St.Timothy-Comelec contract violative of law, yet did not bar the Comelec from proceeding because time is of the essence”
PARDON the Taglish, and apologies to VP Sara for paraphrasing her “no joke; no joke” in this article, but believe me, this 2025 Comelec-sponsored election system called Miru from the strife-torn but wealthy South Korea is no joke.
Firstly, the Comelec decided to ban Smartmatic, whose machines were first used in 2010 when the public elected the honest PNoy, in 2013 when they chose to elevate MTRCB head Grace Poe to the Senate, in 2016 when they chose Rodrigo Roa Duterte to preside over the country’s affairs, in 2019 to elect Cynthia Villar, Grace Poe otra vez and political newbie Bong Go to the chamber of the “august,” and in 2022 when BbM and Sara swept the elections.
But for some unwarranted noises here and there, we have been ruled by three presidents and a legion of other officials whose victories Comelec promulgated via Smartmatic.
But last year, the same Comelec disqualified Smartmatic, not because of Biliran’s Glenn Chong revealing an alleged meeting between Atty. Liza Araneta-Marcos with its officials prior to the 2022 elections, and neither because Eliseo Rio et al. questioned the reliability of the results that gave BbM-Sara a historic win.
It was disqualified because of accusations of having “bribed” former Comelec Chair Andres Bautista in 2016, for which conviction is still years away, if at all.
Are the grounds germane to the matter of disqualifying the service provider? No, any para-legal will aver, but Comelec thinks it is enough reason to pursue the services of a lone bidder, Miru of Korea whose past record in, of all places, the Congo and Iraq, have been proven unsatisfactory.
Now, to qualify for the 60-40 Constitutionally required capital participation, Korea’s Miru partnered with a St. Timothy Construction Corporation, among others, to provide the needed financial muscle to comply for such a huge undertaking. The construction firm named after a saint is owned by the same people behind another “saintly” company named after St. Gerard, a Quad A construction company which bids for almost any of the DPWH project.
But the owners of St. Timothy withdrew from the partnership, and its owners decided to run its VP and CFO, Sarah (to differentiate from Inday Sara) Discaya against the hyper-popular Vico Sotto in the City of Pasig where both “saintly” corporations are located.
With financial muscle withdrawn from the joint venture with Comelec, is the original contract to lease the machines for a few pesos below 18 billion still valid?
Any para-legal can tell you the contract is dissolved, but Comelec led by “legal beagles” says go ahead, and Miru’s Korean owners say they will get a new partner, which, as of this writing, neither parties to the contract have publicly announced.
And any paralegal will tell you that a new contract will need to be drawn if indeed Miru has a new Filipino-owned corporate partner.
Now 18 billion is far too big an amount. VP Sara’s questioned CIF is a mere 625 million, very much smaller even if it used Mary Grace Piattos instead of invoking two saints in their undertaking. And 18 billion is four times bigger than the CIF of our President, mismo!
Further, Comelec ditched the still usable machines worth 6 billion which it purchased from American Smartmatic to lease Miru’s prototype for 18 billion, three times more!
What justifies such a quantum jump? Miru will provide optical readers attached to the vote machine, where the voter can view his kilometric ballot in a monitor as large as a laptop screen. Such differing technology justifies a marginal cost of 12 billion pesos?
But wait! Because voters will have difficulty verifying their vote in the screen and, intentionally or not, deprive the long line of voters their turn, as they check the veracity of their recorded vote, Comelec decided to not utilize the monitors except in the 70 overseas centers, out of the 120,000 machines they ordered from Miru.
Back we will go to the small print-outs which Smartmatic likewise provided in the past. This is what the never-yet-tested-elsewhere OMR and DRE machines tailor-made technology for the Philippines will provide Comelec for an 18 billion-peso lease. Lease, not sale.
I can go on and on trying to explain in layman’s terms how Miru is no biru-biro, both in terms of reliability and humongous cost to us taxpayers, but my space is limited.
Maybe the feisty Waray-Waray, the Honorable Ombudsman Samuel Martires would want to motu propio investigate what could be a heist bigger than Napoles, a deal which strikes at the heart of our democratic choice of leaders.
Strangely, in a decision so weird even lawyers cannot comprehend, our Supreme Court deemed the Miru-St.Timothy-Comelec contract violative of law, yet did not bar the Comelec from proceeding because time is of the essence. Weird.
