More corporatocratic plots

DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
10/14/2005



While the nation is struggling to excise the evil Gloria and stop growing economic and political oppression, her plunder partners behind the scene are advancing the plunder of the country. The latest - creeping privatization of the Land Bank of the Philippines and the Development Bank of the Philippines by the Ayala gofer Finance Secretary Gary Teves. For several days now, trial balloons of the plan have been floated under various guises in the newspapers unnoticed by nationalists and the Left.

“LBP, DBP merger mooted under plan”, the headline would at first appear reasonable given that consolidation has been a trend in the banking sector worldwide. A closer reading brings out the real story: “The government will ride the wave of consolidation in the financial industry by merging state banks with private banks starting possibly with the LBP and the DBP.” The LBP board approved the plan, according to FS Teves at the sidelines of the Philippine Business Conference (PBC) held at the Manila Hotel.

What lucky private bank or banks will be blessed with such a merger with the country’s two largest public banks that has been funded by taxpayers? Credibility of Teves, its promoter, had to be built up. Anticipating criticisms such as this column, which is accusing Gary Teves of initiating plunder of these two banks in behalf of foreign and domestic oligarchy interests, the next day another news item appears attempting to imbue Teves with a patriotic, anti-foreign intervention character. The headline goes this way: “AGILE revival seen thru new U.S. program”.

According to this report Teves “…turned down a U.S. government proposal linking the Econommic Modernization through Efficient Reforms and Governance Enhancement (Emerge)… FS Margarito Teves wrote Jon Lindsborg mission director at the USAID … Emerge has all the makings of the AGILE lobby disaster, Teves said.” AGILE has been exposed by Senator Pimentel as move for economic subversion. EMERGE had replaced AGILE, but it has also been exposed recently. Teves is grandstanding on the discarded USAID operations.

A likely beneficiary of Teves’ maneuvers will be the Ayala group and its flagship Bank of Philippine Island (BPI), which was also the sole local beneficiary of banker Rafael Buenaventura’s privatization of the Bureau of Treasury custodianship of government securities which would results in hundreds of billions in fees for BPI and four foreign banks. Imagine what the private bank blessed with a merger with the two government banks stand to gain, hundreds of billions of government deposits and even more humongous investment and loan portfolios!

Over at out energy sector, the plunder continues too. The National Association of Electricity Consumers for Reforms (Nasecore) is lambasting the government for allowing Meralco to buy electricity from its own IPPs when the EPIRA law mandates that the “least cost” should be used to benefit consumers. Meralco customers are deprived of the full 30-centavo per kilowatt-hour mandatory rate reduction prescribed by the EPIRA. Meanwhile, the Bankruptcy Court in Fort Worth, Texas approved its appointment of Edward Muller as chairman of the board of the country’s largest IPP group Mirant.

Mirant is a U.S. energy company bankrupted to the tune of $ 1-B, but here it is estimated that in the years since the full-fledged application of the Purchased Power Agreement (PPA) Mirant has earned at least $ 3-B. This was possible with the conspiracy of the Economic Hit Men of the U.S.State Department, the international financial institutions like IMF-WB, the local oligarchy and its political hireling Fidel V. Ramos down to Gloria in manipulating and passing the EPIRA privatization law. Meranwhile, other plunder continue: the North Luzon Expressway plunder continues, and the MRT they want to sell back to government and get their windfalls in advance.

Skeptics charge us as “conspiracy theorist”, but: History is written by conspiracies. Today, the global oligarchs under several names such as the Bildebrerg Group or the Tri-lateral Commission, and its branches such as the Royal Institute of International Studies or the Council of Foreign Affairs, attempt to run the lives of 7-billion people solely for the financial interest of the global oligarchy. Democracy means nothing to them; wars, terror and international police action are coordinated to serve their ends – such as Meiring’s (yesterday’s column) links to Interpol, or Osama bin Laden’s support from the U.S. State Department in the 80’s.

The oligarchy through the global corporatocracy reigns and plunders. Here is another evidence from U.S. news of the link between global politics, wars and terror and profits, from Rense.com: “Cheney's Halliburton Stock Rose 3,281%... The options were worth $241,498, now they are worth $8 million.… Halliburton has already raked in more than $10billion … for work in Iraq, and now they are being awarded some of the first Katrina contracts. It is unseemly for the Vice President to continue to benefit from this company….'' But he is, using government and corporations; and they accuse the Third World countries of being corrupt?

The Philippines has always been under the devious schemes of the global corporatocracy, but more so now under Gloria. I don’t know what assets will be left in the people’s hands a few more years from now. Among the few who have fought the global and local oligarchy’s plunder is President Estrada, and he’s under detention now. This column will carry on.

(Sunday tune in to Teachers for National Transformation at 1350AM, 10-11am)