Now it's overpriced Comelec contract for ballot packaging

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) paid more than double the expected price for materials and services used for packing and sealing ballots for the May 2010 polls, an official in Comelec Chairman Jose Melo's office said. The contract, which involves sealing ballots in clear, airtight plastic bags and placing them in boxes, should only cost anywhere from P70 to P80 million, Atty. Melchor Magdamo told GMA News. Instead, the deal was secured by Noah’s Paper Mills Inc. for P175 million, excluding labor costs, said Magdamo, the same person who blew the whistle on the P690 million ballot secrecy folder contract that was later canceled. Besides claiming that the contract was intentionally overpriced, Magdamo also said that it was not awarded to Smartmatic-Total Information Management (TIM) — the same company that supplied Comelec’s automated poll equipment — even though it gave the best offer of P150 million. This was confirmed by Smartmatic Asia president Cesar Flores, who said that the company submitted a proposal to pack the ballots using vacuum sealing, to protect them from dirt and dust while being transported. However, when Smartmatic was about to acquire the vacuum seal machines, the equipment was suddenly sold to Noah, Flores said. "We were originally proposing that because we were concerned about the integrity of the ballots," he said. But Magdamo, the assistant head of the group in charge of ballot printing, said that since it was an "emergency purchase," it did not undergo bidding. "Ang suspetsa ko ay ayaw lang nila mag-fail ang eleksyon (para puro) patong, patong, patong, patong, patong. Saan po napupunta ang patong?"?he said in an interview. (I suspect that they didn’t want the elections to fail that’s why they kept on padding the costs. But where does that money go?) Meanwhile, the Commissioner Gregorio Larrazabal said that the poll body awarded the contract to Noah to avoid any more questions about awarding the deal to Smartmatic, which already previously secured the P7.2-billion automation deal, including the contract to deliver the ballots to around the country. Same banana? Magdamo also hinted that Comelec Executive Director Jose Tolentino, Jr. was involved in the awarding of the contract. Magdamo had earlier claimed that Tolentino was involved in the botched ballot secrecy folder deal. The Comelec had earlier awarded the contract to supply 1,815,000 pieces of 25-inch long ballot secrecy folders to One Time Carbon (OTC) Paper Supply for P690 million. But it later cancelled the deal because it was supposedly "extravagant and beyond the ordinary needs of the Commission." Comelec law department head Ferdinand Rafanan had said that Tolentino should explain himself because he supposedly recommended the OTC for the award. "I think the (Comelec) en banc was misled," he said. But the director denied that he was connected in any way to the OTC. Magdamo was the same person who reported the ballot folder controversy to Dr. Arwin Serrano of the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV), who told Rafanan about the issue. Rafanan is the head of the three-man panel tasked to look into the recommendation of the Comelec’s Bids and Awards Committee to award the ballot secrecy folder contract to OTC. - RJAB Jr./HGS, GMANews.TV