(UPDATED) MANILA - The Commission on Elections (COMELEC) unanimously decided at mid-day Thursday to lease 93,000 all-new optical mark reader machines from the consortium Smartmatic-Total Information Management (TIM) Corporation for the 2016 election at a cost of P7.9 billion.
"The Commission believes this is the most viable, practical and safest option to pursue in our effort to ensure the credibility of the 2016 elections," Comelec Chairman Andres Bautista said.
Smartmatic-TIM Corp., which leased, then sold to Comelec, the precinct count optical scan machines used in the 2010 and 2013 polls, said it will definitely "take no part" in the refurbishment of the 81,897 units now warehoused.
"Fixing them now is cutting it too close to deadline and could cause glitches compromising the 2016 elections," it said.
Speaking at the Kapihan sa Manila Bay Media Forum at the Luneta Hotel in Manila, Smartmatic president for Asia Pacific Cesar Flores said: "We won't take part in any refurbishment of 100 percent of the PCOS machines because there is no time to do it before the elections."
"A small quantity" of the total batch of over 80,000 units "might be done, but again when is the decision going to be made and what are the conditions to this process?" He described it as "such a risky timeline," for which "we won't take a chance.”
Instead of refurbishing the PCOS machines that it sold, Smartmatic prodded the poll body to instead buy brand-new optical mark readers (OMRs) from it, saying the latter had superior features to PCOS.
Please see also: Smartmatic refuses to refurbish PCOS machines; says brand-new OMRs are best
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