The corpo-RATS will play...

DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
3/15/2006



While the nation and the international human rights community turns its attention to and protests the tyrannical face Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is putting up to scare the country into submission, and while political fires are lit here and there to start a conflagration (including the aborted C-4 bombings Sen. Biazon has raised an alarm about, bombing ala the year 2000 F-I-D-E-L bombings), the corpo-RATS (not small mice) holding the last precarious string keeping Arroyo hanging there in position are playing to their heart’s delight. Just pay attention to the electricity rate hike newly approved by the ERC.

Two days ago a news item almost drowned out by the “coup” imbroglio is this item: Power rate hike looms after regulator OKs TRANSCO plea, The report said that the cost of electricity “may rise anew” (no, its certain that it will rise again) after the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) approved the proposed revenue ceiling that the National Transmission Corp. (TRANSCO) could aim for this year. It was contained in a 17-page decision released early this month allowing TRANSCO to recover a maximum of P30.673 billion in revenues from power delivery, supply and metering.

Not even the consumer watchdogs on power issues like Nasecore and the Freedom from Debt Coalition were alerted to it. The ERC (Energy Regulatory Commission) again approved a measure that will increase the country’s power rates drastically, affect its economic competitiveness and the welfare of Filipinos, without a sufficient public hearing. When I called up Nasecor’s Pete Ilagan he was yet unaware, partly because he was still in the province at the time the news came out. We did, however, raise the alarm at least a month earlier that the Transco had already petitioned for an increase of its RORB from 12% to 22% - a horrendous increase.

What is the reason being touted for the Transco rate increase? The ERC explained that “The recent development is meantime expected to boost TRANSCO’s viability in preparation for its planned privatization. The Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp. (PSALM) has scheduled the sale of between $2 billion and $3 billion in TRANSCO assets as soon as the ERC issues its final determination of the MAR (Maximum Allowable Return, the new term for RORB or return on rate base; this name changing technique is a standard trick to confuse the public) for the second regulatory period.”

This apparently irrational proposition of raising the profit rates of a public utility company that is to be privatized when it is already making an enviable income can only be understood when seen as an operation and a conspiracy to loot and plunder from us power consumers. TRANSCO is the public company owning and running the national transmission grid, and in the past year it announced earning of as high as P 16.5-B ($ 300-B) and the MAR will allow Transco to increase its power delivery rates by 10.9% from P 242.58/kwh to P269.13 in the Luzon and Visayas grid (more like transmission “greed”).

While the human rights cops of the international community is playing the good cop in chastising Gloria Arroyo on her draconian scare tactics, the corporatocracy (Big Business ala Mirant energy and other dummy organizations) are the big rats running all over the country and looting. The Philippines is under the control of the global “p-loot-ocracy”, i.e. plutocracy of the companies like Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle, et al in partnership with the local oligarchs like the Ayalas, Aboitizes, etc. It is in such grand larcenies as the privatization of public assets that this gigantic historic swindles can be discerned.

This aspect of a Third World nation’s politics is the most difficult to explain, how political corrupt puppets like Gloria in its quests to keep power are used to terrorize a nation, mangle its laws with dictatorial-legal gobbledygook, divide-and-rule, and how various “opposition” forces equally power mongering but without a genuine reform agenda can serve equally well to plunge a country into chaos for the corpo-RATS to take advantage of. This situation is optimized when the Rule of Law based on the Sovereign Will of the People is set aside in the course of the struggle to right wrongs, and thus no objective and common basis for national unity can be attained.

The global corpo-RAT-ocratic p-loot-ocracy (forgive the jargon, but mastering it will simplify the identification of this enemy) is helping weaken Gloria Arroyo regime without allowing its final liquidation yet, while it continues to give in to such abhorrent plundering deals like the doubling of TRANSCO profit rates and then privatizing it under some Singaporean dummy company in behalf of the global corporatocracy. The only way to stop this plunder of the Philippines is for Filipinos to unite under a nationalistic leadership and re-establish the sovereignty of the it’s nation-state, and re-nationalize the strategic industries and public utilities.

The genuine, self-sacrificing and heroic leadership for the country emerging from the anti-Gloria struggle such as Gen. Danilo Lim, Gen. Marcelino Franco, Col. Airel Querubin (any Hugo Chavez from these?), activist Jose Luis Alcuaz, Cong. Riza Hontiveros, the Bagong Katipuneros (Trillanes, San Juan, Rabonza, et al), former Senator Gregorio Honasan, journalists Ninez Cacho-Olivares and Ike Señeres, and the thousands more I have no space to list down here, must consolidate around the great nationalist cause to complete the Rizal-Bonifacio revolution!