A bidder for the automated elections said it will challenge the Commission on Elections (Comelec) in court should Smartmatic-TIM win the contract for additional counting machines, the firm’s counsel said.
“We want to help Comelec and the country avoid any and all doubts about our electoral process,” Archibald De Mata, legal counsel of Indra Sistemas S.A. Said in a statement.
He claimed that the ownership is still unresolved over the technology being used by Smartmatic in the Precint Count Optical Scan PCOS) units to be added to about 82,000 machines bought by the poll body in 2012.
“We deem such confirmation of utmost importance to avoid any violations of the provisions in the bidding documents, particularlySection 8.2 of the BDS, as what previously happened,” De Mata said.
“We are imploring the Comelec to not let this issue pass as the bidding goes along. Should Smartmatic win the bid and then be found not owning the PCOS technology, then they may be in violation of the very same rules they had set out.”
De Mata said his client is “hopeful that the BAC will consider our sentiment and serve us a copy of the Smartmatic’s reply to the issue on their ownership of the machines andsoftware that they intend to supply the Commission for the 2016 National and Local Elections.”
In 2009, Smartmatic-TIM submitted a copy of the ISO-9001 certification of Jarltech Inc. of Taiwan as part of their eligibility requirement, claiming they were majority owners of the company, and effectively concealing the fact that they were subcontracting the manufacture of the PCOS.