MANILA — In two separate rulings, the Supreme Court has denied bids to stop the Land Transportation Office’s (LTO) contracts for the supply of driver’s license cards in 2010 and 2017.

Both decisions were rendered by the SC Second Division.

2017 CONTRACT

Speaking through SC Senior Associate Justice Marvic Leonen, the high court on June 27 junked the petition filed by the Anti-Trapo Movement of the Philippines, an NGO, which sought to stop the LTO from awarding an P830-million contract to contractor Dermalog for the supply and delivery of driver’s license cards.

The NGO claimed the contract should not be awarded to Dermalog, the third lowest bidder, because its bid is almost P80 million more than the lowest bidder, Banner, which was then appealing its failure to comply with post-qualification requirements.

It argued that the P80 million difference, to be shouldered by 8.36M Filipino motor vehicle drivers, is an issue of transcendental importance that gives it the legal standing to challenge the award.

But the court ruled otherwise.

“While a substantial amount of public funds was involved in the procurement of driver’s license cards, petitioner fell short of establishing that respondent blatantly disregarded relevant constitutional and statutory prohibitions in awarding the contract to Dermalog. Banner’s submission of the Lowest Calculated Bid does not automatically warrant an award of the contract in its favor, especially since it was found noncompliant during the mandatory post-qualification. Petitioner simply failed to show that no other party has a more direct interest on the matter in question,” it said.

The high court added, the contract has actually been awarded and Dermalog had started distributing the driver’s license cards, thus there is nothing left to stop.

As of February 2020, the German company said on its website that the LTO has issued 20,000 licenses per day using the system it provided to the agency in 2017, which was also used to launch LTO’s digitized and centralized system for storing and processing data.

Even disregarding the procedural infirmities, the SC said the petition should still be dismissed because there was no grave abuse of discretion in awarding the contract to Dermalog.

2010 CONTRACT

Meanwhile, on July 4, the same SC Division through SC Associate Justice Jhosep Lopez, affirmed the Court of Appeals’ ruling reversing a writ of preliminary injunction issued by a regional trial court.

The injunction was secured by Amalgamated Motors Philippines, Inc. (AMPI), one of 2 prospective bidders who had paid P84,000 for the purchase of terms of reference (TOR) for the 2010 bidding of the driver’s license cards contract.

But their bids were not opened because the then-Department of Transportation and Communication (DOTC) ordered a review of the TOR and eventually modified it.

In its ruling, the high court said AMPI, as mere prospective bidder, had no “clear and unmistakable right,” one of the requisites for issuing a writ of preliminary injunction.

“It is not a right in esse. At best, petitioner’s right was merely speculative,” it said.

An injunction, the high court ruled, does not protect or enforce contingent, abstract, or future rights.

It added, AMPI could also not claim it stood to suffer irreparable injury if the contract were awarded to another contractor.

At the time of the bidding in 2010, AMPI had been a long-time supplier of LTO under the Arroyo administration.

It faced criticism as to why it continued being LTO’s contractor when its contract with LTO expired as early as 2003.

The high court however clarified that while it reversed the issuance of the writ of preliminary injunction, the RTC has yet to rule on the validity of the orders issued by the DOTC and the then-DOTC secretary modifying the TOR and creating a special bids and awards committee.

The 3 other members of the Second Division — associate justices Amy Lazaro-Javier, Mario Lopez and Antonio Kho, Jr., — all concurred in the 2 rulings.

FROM THE ARCHIVES

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