SMARTMATIC TIM MOVE

What is happening to the Philippines? Isn't there no room for a trustworthy process to work any longer? You can just ask these questions if you happened to read the recent row between Smartmatic and TIM (Total Information Management). This joint venture is the winner of Poll Automation contract for the Philippine 2010 election. Everybody was ecstatic about the outcome and the relatively clean bidding process only to find out that in the end TIM, the local partner of Smartmatic would just back out of the deal.

It is high time for the Philippines to go on automation for its electoral process. It is commonly known that all the election exercises in the past have been rigged with fraud whether local or national. The one which was so remarkable among all was the 2004 election which involved no less than the presidential candidates. It was said, although the obvious has never been proven, the current President of the Philippines Gloria Macapagal Arroyo cheated in the 2004 election as manifested in her "hello graci" scandal. The administration have been badgered about the scandal by media and the people waiting for resolution but even the death of the whistle blower never exposed anything. We just got the "I'm sorry" statement from the president.

Poll automation is necessary for at least we can look forward to a better electoral practice in 2010. It is important to both the voters and also to the legitimate candidate, but it is a taboo to those who intend to mar the election with illicit "dagdag bawas" (add deduct) scheme. This is the scheme applied by many unscrupulous candidate who would do anything to win the election. Many would accuse Gloria Arroyo to be a beneficiary of this scheme.

When you look at the vignette behind the TIMs reasons why it would back out from a practically huge contract with the government, one cannot deny that they would think someone has manipulated it. They were unable to filter the bidding process so they went to the bidder themselves. Whoever is behind this is not known and will never be known. It is a mafia act covered with extreme secrecy, that not even the errand wouldn't know who ordered him to do such.

It was learned that TIM asked for half a billion peso from Smartmatic for the joint venture, it was so uncanny for TIM to have asked that when the contract has already been awarded. Wouldn't you iron out everything before they would jump into a deal, as what TIM should have done in the first place. These are mature people and seasoned businessmen which makes us suspicious that they haven't looked into these scenarios before hand.

Everybody in the world knows that failure to deliver the service committed into a contract will be penalized. The penalty TIM for backing out from a commitment they made in the bid is up to 15 year in prison but unsurprisingly they don't give a damn about the threat. I believe that somehow somewhere somebody gave them the invincibility cloak similar to the invisibility cloak of Harry Potter which gave them the immunity to confront COMELEC with their geste.