Feuding poll partners told: Try 'marriage of convenience'

As the fate of the Philippines' poll automation hung in the balance, Chairman Jose Melo of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) brokered an emergency meeting on Tuesday between estranged partners Smartmatic Corp. and Total Information Management (TIM) and urged them, essentially, to kiss and make up. “I told them in a joking manner that they will be the one to decide what type of marriage they will have: a marriage of convenience, a shotgun marriage or a real marriage," Melo said. After the meeting, Melo seemed to be sending conflicting signals by saying the chances for poll automation next year remain “very slim" after TIM decided to terminate its partnership last Monday with Smartmatic.

But at the same time, Melo said he and poll commissioners were optimistic that the two parties will reconsider, especially TIM. Smartmatic previously said it was capable of going it alone, but the law requires foreign contractors to have a local partner, which would be TIM in this case. Smartmatic was represented in the talks by its spokesmen Cesar Flores and Juan Villa. The TIM delegation was headed by its President and CEO Jose Mari Antuñez, who was accompanied by lawyer Boy de Borja and senior vice president Salvador P. Aque. After the meeting, both sides were told by Melo not to speak to the media. So it was up to Melo to manage the nation's expectations about what kind of elections it would have next year -- its very first computerized elections or the traditional manual vote counting. Neither the meeting nor Melo's statements to the media seemed to add any clarity to the muddled situation, except that the poll chief confirmed that the two companies fought over control of the billions of pesos involved in mounting computerized elections. Melo gave the two parties until Friday to resolve their differences. The procurement law requires foreign companies like Smartmatic to have a Filipino partner in order to conduct business in the Philippines, but the Comelec hinted that there are ways to work around this provision. "There is another view that for unprecedented and novel projects like this, the 60-40 provision might not be applicable. But we will have to look into that more deeply," Special Bids and Awards Committee head Ferdinand Rafanan told GMA News. Melo has also said the poll body could work with a partner-less Smartmatic in conducting the machine count. But Sen. Francis Escudero, co-chairman of the joint congressional oversight committee on automated polls, cautioned the Comelec not to team up with Smartmatic Corp. in implementing the poll automation. "The Comelec is treading on dangerous ground. This option is fraught with possible legal and technical problems," Escudero said. Melo is insistent that poll automation is necessary to prevent the cheating that has occurred in previous elections. Others argue that with the preparations for automation already a month behind schedule because of the current impasse, the elections will become a logistical nightmare. "We are talking of 82,200 machines here, whose delivery most likely will be delayed," writes analyst and GMANews.TV blogger Winnie Monsod, "which will mean that their testing and inspection will be delayed, which will mean that their configuration -- which involves inputting the names of 340 candidates -- will be delayed." Besides, she continues, "it should not be assumed that just because there is automation, there could be no cheating. Given new technologies, it is possible that cheating can occur on an even more massive scale unless steps are taken to prevent that." In an interview on 24 Oras, Monsod's husband Christian, Comelec chair in the 1990s, raised the possibility of a "partial automation," and reminded the public that the last presidential elections in 2004 was marred by charges of cheating with the connivance of at least one Comelec official, the infamous Hello Garci scandal. Another former Comelec official who declined to be identified told GMANews.TV that the collusion of Comelec insiders can enable cheating in either system, automated or manual. With a report from Amita Legaspi, GMANews.TV