It's the Anglo-U.S. con game, stupid

INFOWARS
Herman Tiu Laurel
6/2/2008



The country is up in arms against the Lopezes for the swindle of people's hard earned money for astoundingly overpriced electricity, with much of it never delivered. Meantime, some well-meaning citizens and consumer advocates who are siding with Winston Garcia, unknowingly perpetrate a grand deception to merely transfer Meralco to Arroyo's cronies, even with just the false hope of negligible power rate reductions in mind. And while a church leader says government is "not known as a good businessman," this, too, wrongly implies that it's better to make power a commodity for profit instead of a tool for public service. The real culprits in the exorbitant power prices in the Philippines—the Anglo-U.S. overlords, along with their predatory policies, which are enforced on us through corrupt leaders they help install—are escaping scrutiny in the cacophony of acrimonious debate and propaganda.

That is why a few clarifications are in order.

First of all, privatized electricity is without a doubt higher in cost than publicly owned and operated electricity. The reason is simple: the profit factor pushes up the price automatically. Add deregulation to privatization then you have a money juggernaut gone amuck, as what had happened with Enron in 2001 by way of artificial power shortages to jack up rates. If the Bible points to money as the root of all evil, then by syllogistic consequence, making electricity a commodity for money-making rather than a service for the public good now makes it the root of the Meralco and IPP-PPA evil, bedeviling the Filipino people. Not surprisingly, the idea of privatizing electricity originated from England and the U.S., with Thatcher, Reagan and Bush, Enron, Bechtel, etc.

Second, the Lopezes admitted that it faced financial collapse in the first quarter of the 1970's. The Lopezes were forced to seek government's bail-out, the two biggest factors were: (a) the peso devaluation that crippled Meralco, which had huge obligations to its U.S. benefactors and international banks (led by IMF-WB), all denominated in dollars; and (b) the sudden, inordinate rise in the world price of oil, which was the main fuel of its power plants at that time. These two are undoubtedly within the purview of the Anglo-U.S. powers to manipulate to their advantage, which is why in today's oil price hike, 60 percent is attributed to oil trade speculation in cahoots with banks. The same thing happened from 1971 to 1973, when they triggered the 6-Day Arab-Israeli War and oil price spikes, down to their conspiracy with OPEC and the Saudis to recycle petro-dollars through Third World debt entrapments.

Since time immemorial, exchange rates are manipulated to the advantage of the U.S. The decline in today's dollar, for instance, is due to the controlled depreciation the U.S. hopes will stem its imports, promote domestic production and push its exports all over the world. Thus, we can see U.S. Chevy's and Fords in the Philippine market again in numbers not seen since the 1960's. But it still hasn't worked effectively since China has not revalued as the U.S. wants.

The Lopezes were bankrupted by the peso devaluation of the 1970's, in the same way that Napocor's debts ballooned after the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. Napocor was laden with dollar obligations from Ramos' IPP contracts, including the supply of oil and coal for IPPs. Thus, it was a devastating triple whammy for Napocor: the dollar doubled in value, its profitable power plants and markets were privatized, and its fuel supply contracts rose in cost.

Third, in the 1992-93 Philippine power crisis, Meralco signed a long-term supply contract with Napocor to ensure a steady, cheap power supply for distribution to its six-million customers. At that time Royal Dutch Shell and Texaco were already jumpstarting the Malampaya offshore natural gas platform and needed to ensure their market. So Ramos intervened to broker the natural gas IPPs, which the Lopezes gleefully accepted even if it had to renege on its contract with Napocor as there was more money to be made that way. But then, Meralco simply had to conspire with Gloria to have the penalties for violating the supply contract with Napocor, a whopping P52 billion, passed on to consumers. Only opposition from the likes of this writer, FDC and Nasecore stopped it.

Fourth, what Royal Dutch Shell, IMF-WB, the oil giants, Wall Street and the Washington-London axis want, they get. With Gloria's imprimatur, imagine them indexing the low-cost natural gas for electricity to high priced diesel, which we are only beginning to discover through probes into the Malampaya-Lopez-Arroyo connections!

Fifth, in the domestic war between the Lopezes and Arroyos et al, who are all puppet-agents of the Anglo-U.S. powers, the Lopezes will win because the economic agents are more permanent while the political puppets are more expendable as the shock absorbers and red herrings of the people's wrath. When someone asked who I am siding with in the Meralco-Lopez fight against Gloria-Garcia. I said that I'm siding with neither as I side only with the people against them all, the Anglo-U.S. imperial swindlers and their puppet-agents. To believe that the Gloria-Garcia side will really bring about the correct power price reduced to the level of the average Asean or Asian power rates is to be a fool. The Epira privatization law and the whole structure emerging from it, including the IPPs, the inutile ERC and the manipulated Wesm, stops any attempt at really arriving at an economic power price. Bring it to court and it'll take the next twenty years to resolve, all in favor of the money mongers. This is why I make a call for revolution to turn things around--peacefully, I hope.

Peaceful revolution can succeed if our electoral system can be trusted--as shown in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Argentina, Brazil and Chile where patriotic and pro-people forces and reforms won by election. Otherwise, we'll need the intervention of enlightened, pro-people military forces to aid genuine civilian leaders march up the path of reform and change peacefully. The imperative reforms are the restoration of the pubic ownership and management of the energy sector as a public service, to junk the Epira and its conversion of electricity into a commodity for profit. Then a medium term program for energy self-sufficiency be put in place. Indeed, the country is most ready for revolution after the Meralco-Lopez versus Arroyo-Garcia comedy that has outraged to the maximum.

(Tune in to my shows, "Talk News TV," on Destiny Cable Channel 3, every Tuesday, 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., "Kape't Kamulatan, Kabansa" on 1098AM, Monday to Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 9 a.m., and "Suló ng Pilipino" every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. on the same station)