A story in Diario Libre on 4 November 2021 reads as many cases did during the Medina administration. An interim judge at the Superior Administrative Court (TSA) has ruled in favor of a government entity and against the collective good and taxpayers. Diario Libre says the ruling will cost taxpayers RD$1.3 billion.
The Procurement Agency (DGCP) had protested the billionaire e-devices procedures carried out by the Ministry of Education. A recourse had suspended at least the awarding of several batches on grounds of major irregularities in the contracting.
Yet, the ruling by the interim judge Diomede Villalona, gives green light to the debated contracting. The efforts of the Procurement Agency now under Carlos Pimentel have not been enough to stop the contracting.
Diario Libre’s editor, Ines Aizpun writes in an editorial on 5 November:
“Does the TSA ruling in favor of the Ministry of Education (Minerd) compromise the authority of the Procurement Agency (DGCP)? The DGCP annulled 45 of 56 lots of an e-devices tender that the Ministry of Education awarded in December 2020. The reasons were more than blunt: the DGCP considered that the Minerd had excluded companies that met the tender conditions and offered the netbooks, laptops and tablets at lower prices than those that the Minerd chose to buy. Minerd chose the companies that sold the devices for RD$1.3 billion more than the offer of companies that were excluded.
“But the TSA (presided by an interim judge, what a coincidence!) ordered that the matter be sent to a trial on the merits and that the bidding be carried out with the lots chosen by the Ministry.
“This opens a complicated door for the DGCP. If its decisions are recurrently sent to court, what good can they do? The bidding processes may be resolved with irregularities… which will be seen in court in two or three years.
“If public institutions allow themselves to ignore the authority of oversight institutions….. we are in a bad situation.”
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Diario Libre
Diario Libre
5 November 2021