After weeks of suspense and tense reconciliation meetings between estranged contract partners, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) Friday finally sealed the deal with the winning consortium. But a recent petition filed with the Supreme Court still threatens to derail the contract, reported GMA News.TV. The signing of the contract will start the preparations for the historic first automation program for the Philippines' general elections next year, and end the manual system that has been blamed for electoral fraud in past elections. Elections in the Philippines have been characterized by massive cheating, vote buying, and voter intimidation. “This (automation) project is not like any other project, like say a construction project wherein if a petition is filed we can say, ‘Oh ipagpaliban muna natin ito [Let's suspend this for a while] out of respect to the Court.' But here, we cannot do that because we have to meet some timeline. We cannot postpone the elections. So we had to do that now,” Melo stressed. The Comelec said that the P7.2 billion payment will be done in 13 installments - the last payment to be given after the May 2010 elections. “We are humbled and privileged to be given this opportunity to be part of this historic undertaking. So rest assured that TIM will do its best to help ensure that we have a fast, clean, and credible election come 2010,” TIM's Aque said. Smartmatic-TIM spokesman Cesar Flores said now that the deal was sealed, Comelec and Smartmatic-TIM can go “full blast” and proceed with the next phase of the poll automation project. “What comes next are meetings, meetings, and meetings. Both teams need to start interacting with each other. We need to start understanding the lines of reporting and responsibilities in the project,” Flores said. He said in the course of implementing the highly-anticipated automation project, Smartmatic-TIM and Comelec would be hiring over 100 people for their project management team, and a 42,000-strong technical manpower. By next week, Smartmatic-TIM would be placing orders for the components to be used in the manufacture of the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines. Then in September, Taiwanese-based Jarltech will begin assembling voting machines, which are all expected to be shipped to the Philippines by the end of the year. “We plan to make 2,000 machines a day. If we really need to rush, we can try producing as many as 4,000 machines daily,” Flores said. For the software to be used for the PCOS machines, Smartmatic-TIM plans to customize a technology owned by Canadian firm Dominion Voting Systems of Canada. Under the automation system, the Comelec has reduced the number of polling precincts from 250,000 in the 2007 elections to just 80,000 for the 2010 elections. Smartmatic-TIM is mandated to supply 82,500 voting machines, with 2,500 machines serving as backups. One precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machine will cover about 1,000 voters. The Comelec and the winning consortium pushed through with the contract-signing as the Supreme Court did not issue a temporary restraining order in response to a petition filed by Harry Roque and other lawyers, who alleged that the joint venture failed to conform with several requirements in the bidding. Melo, a retired Supreme Court associate justice, said the Comelec is more than ready to respond in case the SC seeks the poll body's comment on the Roque
