Hit or mess

The President of the republic finally spoke. In a recent meeting with members of foreign media, our leader Benigno Simeon (aka BS) said that he would want to rebid the contract for the Calax toll road, if only to put an end to the controversies in the bidding process.

Most importantly, he said, he only wanted to protect public interest.

His statement draw reactions from business, with one group opposing the idea of a rebid, citing all sorts of reasons like lack of legal basis and drop in investor confidence. In short, the usual overused motherhood claims!

Anyway, our leader BS must step into the controversy in order to clean up the mess in the bidding of the P35-billion Calax project, because some government officials mishandled the whole thing.

But how important is the Calax road—costing a fantastic sum of P35 billion, covering 35 years of toll contract with the government, spanning 47 kilometers of heavily populated areas from Kawit in Cavite to the Mamplasan interchange at the Slex?

Well, the Aquino (Part II) administration labeled it one of the banner ventures of its PPP (Public Private Partnership) program, being the biggest toll way project and all.

To top it all, our leader BS cited a rather convincing reason for his favoring a rebidding: It would be difficult to explain to the public why the government would forego the P9-billion payment of the road operator to the government for the contract.

The mysterious P9 billion was actually the difference between the “accepted” bid of Team Orion (the Ayala-Aboitiz joint venture) and the “rejected” bid of Optimal Infrastructure Development (San Miguel group).

Ayala-Aboitiz submitted a bid of P11.6 billion, which bested the bids of two other groups. And so the DPWH (Department of Public Works and Highways) declared Ayala-Aboitiz the “winner.”

But then again, on the day of the opening of the financial bids—right there in the DPWH venue, in full view of members of media with running TV cameras of the international news network CNN—the “disqualified” San Miguel nonetheless opened its bid, showing that it offered to the government some P20.1 billion for the contract.

The coup performed by the San Miguel group that day, well, even earned the ire of ranking officials of the DPWH, who asked armed security men to show the San Miguel representatives—including members of the media—out of the premises.

Anyway, the “rejected” bid was higher by almost P9 billion than the “accepted” highest bid, which our leader BS cited as his main reason for wanting a rebidding.

I mean, really now, P9 billion could still build 9,000 classrooms easily.

We must revisit the start of the controversy way back to the prequalification phase of the Calax bidding, as the four interested bidders presented their documents to the government.

At that time, the DPWH noted a discrepancy in dates indicated in the “bid bond” of the San Miguel group.

Now in its media statements, the San Miguel called the discrepancy a “typo,” an inadvertent clerical error, although certain media reports insisted that it was a “deficiency”—in effect, echoing the DPWH side.

Let me explain. In the bid bond submitted by San Miguel, the issuing bank declared in no uncertain terms that the bond would be valid for 180 days, although in one portion, it stated a wrong date for the expiration of the bond, which was short by a couple of days.

The SBAC, or the “special bids and award committee” of the DPWH handling the prequalification process, sought clarification from the bank, which affirmed that the bond indeed was valid for 180 days, in effect admitting the “typo,” which the committee in turn accepted as a valid clarification, since the bidding rules allowed the committee to seek precisely that—clarification.

After all, the rules stated that the bid documents would have to be “substantially” compliant to the requirements, which the SBAC considered when it sought the clarification.

It was easy to understand the SBAC move for clarification, because the bank certified that it was a mere clerical error.

The rules thus allowed the committee to waive minor errors as long as it would not—should not—put the government at a disadvantage—such as the P9-billion worth of disadvantage in the bidding results.

So far so good. That was, well, until an official of the DPWH, who was out of the country at that time, suddenly stepped into the picture and overturned the entire committee, thus disqualifying the San Miguel group outright for some supposed technicality.

By the way, I gathered from our contacts in the Aquino (Part II) administration that one of the government officials involved in the bidding—although non-voting—informed our leader BS that the official would resign if the administration were to rebid the contract.

There, the chosen children of our leader BS even dared to issue a veiled threat to the president of the republic.

Still, the mess that was the Calax bidding would continue to haunt the Aquino (Part II) administration, even though our leader BS has already spoken.

Various groups with interest in the project started to rally their camps in what seemed to be a media campaign.

All sorts of characters suddenly gave statements in media about the ill effects of the decision of our leader BS to rebid the contract, seemingly in an effort to jump the gun on the Palace.

Well, the boys of our leader BS nevertheless were consistent in saying that the Palace has no final decision yet.

As for the San Miguel group, its media statement indicated that the country’s biggest conglomerate was not exactly looking at a rebid, because it actually made an appeal to the Office of the President for the government to accept the “superior” bid, in a way overturning its “disqualification” that was the work of one man.

The San Miguel group also had this to say: “We will respect any decision from Malacañang as far as this matter is concerned.”

Other groups nevertheless started to hit the Aquino (Part II) administration regarding the messy Calax case, saying that the rebid would only undermine investor confidence, even citing so-called independent studies.

Just how independent are those studies? It might be a little doubtful, considering that influential companies were involved in the bidding at one time or another. And we all know that, in this country, it would not be difficult to tailor “studies” in accordance with one’s needs.

For instance, one anti-rebid statement came from the financial advisor of one of the bidding groups, which certainly would receive a handsome “success fee,” if the project would go to its client. So much for independent studies!

On the contrary, when we talk of investor confidence, the stance of our leader BS for a rebid precisely should serve as a testament to the transparency in government deals that he has been espousing all along—and that was one reason why we elected him.

It should help remove the prevalent perception in business, well, regarding the bias in favor of certain business groups in the Aquino (Part II) administration.

Come to think of it, boss, it was not just the difficulty in explaining to us why the government would choose to forego P9 billion. The main issue here would be this simple thing called “fairness.” You know, the right thing to do!

But what would happen now to those responsible for the whole mess? Really, nobody ever gets fired in the Aquino administration.