MANILA, Philippines – The joint venture led by Smartmatic-Total Information Management (TIM) Corporation was the only bidder that passed the first stage of the bidding for the lease of touchscreen voting machines for the 2016 national elections.

On Tuesday, December 16, the bids and awards committee (BAC) of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) voted 3-2 to declare the Smartmatic-TIM joint venture eligible to proceed to the second stage of the bidding process.

Bids committee chairperson Helen Aguila-Flores, vice chairperson Jubil Surmeida, and member Divina Blas-Perez voted for Smartmatic-TIM’s eligibility, while members Charlie Yap and Maria Juana Valeza deemed Smartmatic-TIM as ineligible.

The Smartmatic joint venture is composed of Smartmatic-TIM Corporation, Jarltech International Inc, TIM Corporation, and Smartmatic International Holdings BV.

The other bidder, the Scytl-Vibal Group joint venture, was unanimously declared ineligible by the Comelec BAC, due to deficiencies in its eligibility documents and initial technical proposal, as discovered by the bid committee’s technical working group (TWG).

The Comelec seeks to lease 410 direct recording electronic (DRE) voting machines that use touchscreen technology. These machines will be involved in a pilot project to test the use of touchscreen voting in automated elections.

To bag the P32.6-million contract for the DRE machines, Smartmatic-TIM would have to meet the final technical requirements set by the Comelec in the second stage of the bidding process, then hurdle the post-qualification evaluation.

If Smartmatic-TIM fails to do so, the Comelec would declare a failed bidding, and call for a re-bidding of the contract. – Rappler.com