The sovereign, nationalist direction

DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
11/12/2010



Much as I would like to take even a day off from the endless electricity price gouging and swindles, I am not able to. The news every day brings up new cases of the blatant defrauding of the Filipino power consumers by the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC), together with the big private power companies, as well as the silence of the nation’s legislature.

A few days ago, this headline came up: “Aboitiz Equity income jumps 128 percent to P5.6B in Q3.” Looking closely into the details, one reads: “The power group continued to account for the biggest chunk of the income pie with an 83 percent share, followed by the banking and food groups…”

No doubt that 83-percent increase attributed to the Aboitiz power group came from the company’s deal with the Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp. (Psalm), wherein it got to buy the state’s power barges 117 and 118 for a third of what was declared to the ERC when it subsequently entered into a deal for those same barges to fill in for the “energy crisis” in Mindanao.

That threefold increase in valuation, which Therma Marine Inc. of the Aboitiz group submitted to the ERC, was made the basis for setting the current power rates in Mindanao, which, as we reported and powerfully expounded on the floor of Congress by a Mindanao congressman, “have virtually doubled from March to April and May this year.” It was stated further that “In 2009, we paid P49.70 per kWh/month. However, last April we paid P360 per kWh/month and P606 per kWh/month in May 2010. This had caused untold sufferings and hardships to our people in Mindanao, especially the poor.”

Those hardships and sufferings now translate to the huge, heartless, and indecent income jump of 128 percent of the Aboitiz Equity group. And yet this dwarfs what the company got in 2001.

After colluding with the Edsa II power grab of Gloria Arroyo, the Aboitiz group got the newly-installed regime to transfer P20 billion in GSIS (Government Service Insurance System) deposits in the Land Bank of the Philippines — one of our largest and most stable government banks, with over 500 ATMs to service GSIS members — to its own banking interest, Unionbank, which had only less than 50 ATMs at that time.

It was patently illegal since GSIS deposits should always be deposited in a government bank. But aside from being disadvantageous to government, it was also a disservice to the million and a half GSIS members as Unionbank was not in a position to service them efficiently — which resulted in the many years of horrendous complaints about Unionbank and its eCard system with the GSIS. Ten years have passed and despite the continuing abuses, none of these transgressions have been punished.

The abuse by the oligarchs is part and parcel of the continuing policy of liberalization and privatization of the Philippine economy. It has destroyed the public sector and dismantled public, shared ownership of the nation’s wealth and resources by transferring these only to a few — just a dozen or so — corporate oligarchs through which the Western powers plunder the nation.

The mother of all this plunder, in turn, has been the liberalization of our currency and capital regime, which is now highlighted by the ongoing collapse of globalization in the world economy via the currency war that is a-building. This, as self-respecting and self-caring nations start escalating a series of protectionist measures for their economies.

From Brazil (which has raised its tax on foreign investments in its bonds from two to four, and now six percent) to Japan (which has shocked everyone by intervening last September to weaken its yen and announcing this month that it will continue to maintain its weak yen policy), nations are opposing the US’ move to strengthen everyone else’s currency by weakening its own.

All, it seems, except for the Philippines, which is under the IMF-WB (International Monetary Fund-World Bank) stooge Cesar Purisima, who has proudly declared the dollars invested in his $1-billion bonds as tax exempt, thereby strengthening the peso and weakening the dollar, and resulting in punishing losses for our OFWs, export industries, and call centers.

The Aquino government tries to look for some silver lining, such as looking to prepay foreign loans as it takes fewer pesos to pay dollar debts; but the dark clouds are overwhelming.

As oil is already projected to rise to $100/bbl soon, since oil producing countries have set higher prices to compensate for the declining value of the dollar in which the trade is denominated; rice producing countries will certainly do the same. At the same time, without currency and trade restriction, imports from the US will rise and domestic agriculture and industries will suffer even more.

Even without the dollar devaluation, our poultries and piggeries have already been under a lot of pressure from US exports of chicken and pork parts, as our car industry has suffered from American imports. With the dollar devaluation, coupled with the elite and Filipino consumers’ penchant for imports, this will even worsen dramatically.

The only course, if this country is to survive and grow again, is the sovereign and nationalist economic direction. And this is something we hope the Aquino III regime can still learn. If not, then we can expect the pressure for an unscheduled regime change to be in the cards within a year’s time.

(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics Today with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on “Power Consumers’ Legislative Champions: Reps. Bernadette Herrera and Toby Tiangco,” on Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 21; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)