People's victories

DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
6/23/2006



The 2.5-M people and power consumers of Panay Island should be rejoicing now. Our colleague in the anti-PPA crusade, Atty. Romeo Gerochi has just won a P 3-B refund for the people of Panay after the ERC decided last June 9, 2006 that the Panay Electric Company (Peco) overcharged it customers. Peco violated the law requiring power companies to supply electricity to customers at prices equal to or lower than the price that the Napocor can supply. Do you know what this means for the rest of the country? It means that we national consumers can still get hundreds of billions refund from Meralco!

Peco gets its electricity exclusively from PPC an independent power producer (independent power producers), to supply to its 40,000 consumers. It’s like Meralco getting its power supply from its own IPPs, i.e. First Gas, Quezon Power, Sta. Rita and San Lorenzo, and several others which we could not keep track of because of the Lopezes’ new acquisitions. Let’s look at an example of the rip-offs the Lopez IPPs have inflicted on its electricity consumers: Napocor's 2.40 pesos per kilowatt-hour versus First Gas' and San Lorenzo's 6.25 pesos per kilowatt-hour during the 2002 period.

Meralco and the Lopezes are undoubtedly guilty of the same offense against the public as the Peco, but the ERC has apparently done the correct thing in Panay and is stonewalling the effort of the Manila based power consumer groups like the Nasecore (National Association of Electricity Consumers for Reforms) led by Pete Ilagan and the FDC (Freedom from Debt Coalition), my group Sulo ng Pilipino, and others to enforce the provision of the EPIRA that requires power costs to consumers to be equal or lower than what Napocor charges.

Meralco serves 64% of the power needs of the people and the rest of the 36% is shared by about 130 other power companies and Peco, which will refund P 3-B serves only 40,000 of the 5.5-M power customers nationwide, a refund of Meralco’s overcharging of its 3.7-M customers could amount to a P 277-B refund! This estimate is on a conservative P 17,500.00 overcharging based on the ERC’s decision on Peco, and the Meralco overcharging is definitely a lot higher that Peco. Unfortunately, Meralco and the ERC have not produced the documents we have been demanding to prove our case.

Why did the ERC decide with apparent fairness in the Peco decision and, so far, not on the Meralco overcharging? What is Peco but a power company constituting may be only less than half percent of the country power supply, while Meralco represents money, political and media clout that challenges even the presidents of the country. We doubt that the ERC ever intended to judge fairly, but it was cornered by Atty. Gerochi. At any rate, the Peco decision gives new impetus to our struggle for a remedy to the years of criminal overcharging by Meralco and the crusade against power piracy and privatization.

Meralco persists in its gluttony: on June 27 and July 11 there will be all important hearings on Meralco’s petition for additional 14.76 centavos rate increase to attain 15.96% Return-On-Rate-Base (RORB) which it claims to be its right under the EPIRA law. The RORB before was limited to 8% and later increased to 12%, and Meralco is still not content. What Meralco claims to be “international” rates is based on genuine competitive enterprise, but Meralco has monopoly and public subsidy – even its capex (capital expenditure) is charged to customers. It’s maximum RORB should be 8% only.

Nasecore is calling on electricity consumers to show up at the ERC hearings June 27 and July 11 at Ortigas Center, San Miguel Avenue, 9am, to support the fight against the unjust Meralco rate petition by filling the hearing room with oppositors. We must stop the further increases and reverse the unjust RORB the corrupt politicians made into law, and at the same time pursue with new aggressiveness the investigation and filing of cases against the overcharging by Meralco for the past years. Gloria has been horse-trading on this with the Lopezes, rackets we must stop completely to protect consumers.

Truth is on the people’s side and this inspires us to continue and patient struggle is rewarded by successes such as Atty. Gerochi’s victory against the Peco, we can win more of these struggles by persistence and improving our strategies as the fight progresses. It is no different from the struggle of President Estrada to bring out the truth in the cases unjustly and oppressively lodged against him, steamrolling Chavit Singson’s schemes that have attempted to use Mark Jimenez’s lies twisting the Impsa story that has no shred of credibility. Erap’s victories are the people’s victories.

Meanwhile, Erap’s challenge to Gloria to face the impeachment process is catching fire among the citizenry. Gloria’s failure to accept speaks volumes and persuades more citizens’ to join the citizens’ impeachment of Gloria. Although we agree with Atty. Paguia and Digs Dilangalen that a fake president should just be ousted, it is still good for the people to go through the Gloria impeachment process again. As we end this column we hail another people’s victory: it faith that there are still honorable military officers is vindicated by Col. Orlando de Leon’s resignation. We salute you, sir!

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