Power, Erap and Trillanes

DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
8/8/2007



The past weeks highlighted the country’s struggle to expose the abuse of power of Meralco and the complicity of Malacañang. We showed the treachery of “automatic cost recovery” and the public felt the full impact of the treachery in their July Meralco bills that shot up by at least 20% for over four million households. After that more columnists and broadcasters joined in questioning Meralco’s ruthless power abuse, then Meralco launched damage control and counter-attacked – with lies carried in an report by the Inquirer that deliberately omitted the facts from Meralco’s critics.

The struggle of control and rates of electricity is the struggle over power as politics in society. Meralco gets away with criminal profiteering by exercising financial and media power that converts to political power. Behind the Lopezes is the global oligarchy - the British-European Royal-Dutch Shell siphoning profits from Meralco through exorbitant natural gas-IPPs Sta. Rita and San Lorenzo, and foreign financiers are Lopez’s IPP partners. The ERC does not stop Meralco’s abuse, the legislature feigns pre-occupation with “more important” committee chairmanships, mainstream media even pretends Meralco abuse does not exist, Gloria and Esperon play moro-moro in Basilan.

This problem of power, electrical and socio-political, besets the entire society and emblematic of this are the cases of President Estrada (whom oligarchs helped depose) and Senator Trillanes where the people have spoken but their words fall on deaf ears. This situation describes the true picture of the country’s distribution of power, electrical or political - a concentration and monopoly of it in the hands of the oligarchs against the vast majority of eighty-eight million Filipinos. Meralco, Gloria and the elite’s abuse will only end when we reverse this power structure and restore democratic popular will to its rightful throne. We need the Last Revolution.

Meanwhile, in reaction to the clearly biased Inquirer report (not set aright at this writing) Nasecore’s Pete Ilagan e-mailed us, other media people fighting for the power consumers’ rights and friends. Ilagan belies Meralco’s misleading data that the Inquirer reporter unquestioningly reported as gospel truth that led to its grossly misleading headline:

“Before you go over these figures, please get your Meralco Bill last June and July 2007. Just go the first and third charges, generation and system loss, and let the figures speak for themselves. The Inquirer's banner story last Sunday was captioned ‘Meralco cuts rates by P0.43/kWh.’ Here are the facts cited therein: 1. generation charge will go down by P0.3786/kWh; 2. system loss charge will decline by P0.0508/kWh; 3. The July generation charge was P5.67/kWh; 4. The July System Loss charge was P0.90/kWh; 5. The August generation charge will be down to P5.2978/kwh; 6. The August System Loss Charge will be down P0.8479/kwh; 7. Napocor rate fell by P0.45/kWh so its ave. rate is now P5.19/kwh, meaning it used to be P5.64/kWh; 8. Meralco's IPP rates also went down by P0.31/kWh so its down to P4.03/kWh, meaning it used to be P4.34/kWh.

Our comments (Pls. check your the figures in your June and July billings): 1. The story failed to cite that the June generation rate was P4.42/kWh (pls check your June billing) so the July rate of P5.67/kWh applied an INCREASE of P1.25/kWh. (THIS WAS NOT BANNERED IN ANY MAJOR NEWSPAPER LAST MONTH); So, even if Meralco cuts down by P0.37/kWh here (P1.25 - 0.3786 = P0.8714/kWh), they will still enjoy an INCREASE of P0.8714/kWh IN THE GENERATION CHARGE in its August billing based on its June rate of P4.42/kWh; ERC gave Meralco a provisional increase of P0.26/kWh in the previous months so it is still (P0.8714 less P0.2692= P0.60/kWh) P0.60/kWh higher.

2. The story also failed to cite the June system loss charge of P0.72/kWh (pls check your June and July Billing) so the July rate of P0.90/kWh (P0.72 +0.18) applied an increase of P0.18/kWh. So, even if Meralco cuts down its system loss charge by P0.0508/kWh, it will still enjoy a P0.12/kwh INCREASE in the system loss charge in its August billing. The provisional increase in the system loss charge in the previous months was only P0.07/kWh.

3. Prior to the commercial operation of the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) in July 2006, the GENERATION CHARGE that appeared in our Meralco July Billing was P5.21/kWh. The ERC-approved NAPOCOR RATE rate then was P4.93/kwh. This only shows that Meralco IPP rates where higher than P5.21/kWh.

4. Using their own announced figures, let's ADD the Napocor's rate of P5.19/kWh and Meralco IPPs' rate of P4.03/kWh and we will arrive at an average rate of P4.61/kWh. This should be then the GENERATION RATE Meralco should be charging us for August AND NOT the P5.27/kwh it announced. The rate given them by ERC prior to the restoration of the automatic recovery adjustment. ERC's provisional approval on GENERATION adjustment recovery(power purchased) was P0.2692. Add this to the basic charge of P4.4296, we were charged then P4.69/kWh.

Now, that we have allowed Meralco's announced figures and the figures from our Meralco June and July 2007 bills to speak for itself, let's ask ourselves if this Meralco announced rate reduction is something to rejoice about? Let's pray that Meralco may learn to put off falsehood so it may learn to tell the truth. Please forward this to your friends so the truth may come out. – Pete”

(Tune in to 1098AM, M-W-F, 6-7pm)