MANILA (AFP) — A 150 million-dollar project to automate next year's Philippine elections is back on track just days after the winning bidders threatened to walk out on the deal, officials said Friday.
Barbados-based Smartmatic Corp. said the firm and its local partners are to to sign the deal with the government's Commission on Elections (Comelec) next week, in time to put the system in place before the country elects a successor to President Gloria Arroyo on May 10.
The consortium will provide 82,000 computerised counting machines across the southeast Asian archipelago to speed up voting to two days instead of several weeks under the current manual system.
The Arroyo government welcomed the announcement.
"We heave a big sigh of relief and congratulate Comelec, Smartmatic and Total Information Management for hurdling hopefully the last major obstacle to the full automation of next year's polls," Arroyo's political adviser Gabriel Claudio told reporters.
The government threatened on Tuesday to sue Total Information for breach of contract after Smartmatic announced it was pulling out of their partnership with the Filipino firm for unspecified reasons.
However, Smartmatic international sales director Cesar Flores told reporters Friday the two companies "have already signed all necessary documents for the incorporation of our joint venture corporation" which will implement the automation project.
Jose Mari Antunez, president and chief executive of Total Information, confirmed that the consortium members had resolved their differences and agreed to "move forward".
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