Speaking to Lusa, Indra's international director for electoral processes, Eduardo Tejerina González, said that there are no complaints or documentation to support UNITA's accusations, stressing that the company follows the guidelines of the National Electoral Commission (CNE) and what is stipulated in the specifications.
"All this is closely monitored by the CNE and election observers", as happened in 2017 (the last year of elections in Angola) "and no one spoke of irregularities", said González, noting that Indra has repeated electoral processes in countries that even "change political color".
"If there was suspicion of fraud and the political color of the government changes, would they want to collaborate with Indra again if they thought we had done something irregular?", he asked.
The official stressed that Indra is involved in "very transparent, very clear" electoral processes, which leave no doubt for anyone, neither the government nor the opposition.
"What is happening now is that it is a moment of normal political noise, but we are not on the political level, we are on the technical level, we are carrying out a technical implementation of the electoral process", he continued.
Eduardo González stated that if Indra had been behind an electoral fraud in 2017, opposition parties would have taken the allegations, supported by evidence, to court: "These evidences are simple, they [party representatives] are in the assemblies, they they have a copy of the bulletins and the summary minutes and can inspect this data, they did this work, but they did not find any irregularities", he stressed.
The National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), the main opposition party, has contested the choice of Indra, responsible for the technological solutions of the 2008, 2012 and 2017 general elections, in the elections scheduled for August this year and has already announced that would challenge the tender, accusing the Spanish technology company of fraudulent practices.
On Monday, after Indra said that UNITA representatives had participated in choosing the company, as they were also represented on the evaluation committee, the party countered that it did not know how that body worked, stating that the fact that the company knew how was chosen is "serious" and reveals "collusion" with the regime.
The Indra official told Lusa that the evaluation commission includes a group of representatives chosen by the CNE (from the MPLA, the ruling party, and from opposition parties) and that all competitors who submitted proposals were entitled to participate in the evaluation session. .
In this case, it was only the companies that submitted proposals – Indra and Smartmatic, which saw the proposal rejected for violating the tender rules, according to the CNE.
"We were not part of the [evaluation] committee, of course, but we were in the room. Competitors must be in the room to clarify doubts or any question from the evaluation committee", the director of Indra told Lusa, adding that a copy was delivered of the minutes of that session to the competitors.
"The UNITA representative is part of the CNE and the evaluation committee, this person was there and signed the minutes of that first validation session, validating that we were able to continue in the process, while the other competitor was disqualified for an irregularity", he stressed. Eduardo Gonzalez.
The official noted that Indra has already participated in 450 elections in 40 countries, providing not only electoral technical assistance as it is doing in Angola, but also providing materials, electoral consultancy and assistance to electoral observation missions.
Indra provides technical support, providing, for example, all electoral material, from ballot papers, indelible ink, adhesive tape, or 'banners' to polling stations, but does not count the votes.
Eduardo González also ruled out that Indra had been subject to an administrative sanction that would make its candidacy unfeasible, as UNITA said, since what was at stake was a tax regularization process regarding invoices that the Spanish tax authorities considered not to be duly justified.
"It was not a sanction, it was a tax regularization, if that were the case we would also be prevented from participating in competitions in Spain and that did not happen", said the official.
