CONSUMERS DEMAND!
Herman Tiu Laurel
10/10-12/2011
The world now bears witness to the surging rage of the people all over the world as popular grassroots movements have begun to rise into action this year. From the Arab Spring (or at least its beginnings); to the European Summer demonstrations in Athens, London, Rome, Madrid, and Lisbon.
Now, it is the turn of the US Autumn as it blasts into New York’s financial district, with the “Occupy Wall Street” movement demanding an end to the tyranny of financial capitalism all over that country.
Such is the wave of millions of people all over the world rebelling against the failure of the prevailing political-financial and economic order, built on laissez-faire or (freewheeling) capitalism, that has left billions of people poorer than ever as rich people getting richer.
I believe that, in our country, we will soon begin to see a “Philippine Winter Storm” bringing in “Ber” month-political typhoons to Filipinos now ready to rise up against the severe exploitation that have put them out into the cold.
In our last OpinYon piece, we discussed the project that we in the anti-EPIRA (Electric Power Industry Reform Act), anti-PBR (Performance Based Rate) electricity price gouging crusade are proposing and organizing: A vigil to be held at the Freedom Park in front of Malacañang until the PBR is junked and the 12-percent RoRB (Return-on-Rate-Base) for our electricity prices is restored. It would be a jumping board for connecting our millions of electricity consumers to an even greater project, that of converting Meralco and the entire power sector into a consumer cooperative, where every consumer is an owner--since it is they who provide all the capital of power companies.
Since our announcement, we have received numerous inquiries on when and where the vigil would start. Encouraged as I am by the response, I’d still have to stress, as Sun Tzu would in going to war, that victory is all about “preparation, preparation, preparation.”
The past week, as we met with several activists and religious groups to lay out our proposal for the vigil, we were greeted with zealous enthusiasm. Also, last weekend, when I went to a parish of a very influential priest in Novaliches, who could bring in several Catholic bishops to support the project, the emphatic response given to us without any doubt was “(Since) that’s for the people, (and) our people are suffering from that problem, we’ll go all out. When do we start?”
I had to explain that we are still on the preparatory stage, such as getting enough mass support to ensure the vigil’s sustainability through weeks, months, and maybe even a year or more before the oligarchy-controlled Malacañang gives in.
This will be a fight to the finish. We have to consider of course all the logistical support we need like a nearby clean toilet facilities, sound system, adequate food for personalities, as well as media reporters covering the event.
In the coming week, we will be meeting with student groups within the University Belt area, which is just a stone’s throw away from Malacañang and an endless source of warm young bodies to keep the Philippine Winter Storm blistering up.
We will be discussing logistics, i.e. rice and “tuyo” for our people manning the vigil tents; a secretariat who will host press conferences at the site; as well as daily printed bulletins to update visitors on the progress of the struggle. We will be holding regular rallies there as well as seminars on the means by which the power industry can be “cooperativized,” thereby ensuring honest management.
We’ll need a sound system 24/7, together with standby power for some laptops and printers. We’ll also have to prepare protest tarpaulin signs, placards, and streamers.
While it sounds like a huge project, it is really nothing new. We’ve been doing this since the 70s. The problem is, the spirit of protest was lulled into complacency, which is why the oligarchs reared their ugly heads the past few years.
Even as we started the preparation for our anti-EPIRA, anti-PBR vigil, little did we know that there were others also gearing up to escalate the people’s struggle against the very same issue--and more. Sanlakas and Partido Laban ng Masa (PLM), with the Freedom from Debt Coalition (FDC), announced a “Lights Out” for October 11, 7:00 to 8:00 p.m., which will happen in many communities, with others coming out into the streets to wage a “noise barrage.” On October 12, the same array of groups will be staging mass actions to drum up the issue. Before all these, there will be a conference on October 7 at the UP Bahay Kalinaw and a press conference at the Claret School with Rep. Tet Garcia, who’s raising the other issue of junking the VAT as well.
Within the next few days or so, the Anti-Power Pirates Task Force, consisting of individuals who have long been waging battles against the Energy Regulatory Commission and Meralco for their abuses, such as Mang Naro Lualhati, Bono Adaza, Alan Paguia, Jun Simon, Jojo Borja, Butch Junia, Ferdie Pasion, Joy Camaro, Richard, and many others form the Sulo group, will be filing cases in court against those economic saboteurs. Watch out for it.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino/Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m. on 1098AM; Talk News TV with HTL, Saturday, 8:15 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8 on the “Power, Fuel, and VAT Revolt” with Rep. Tet Garcia; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
Monday, October 10, 2011
Turning 63 on October 12
YESTERDAY, TODAY & TOMORROW
Linggoy Alcuaz
10/10-12/2011
After a full year, a month and a week of faithfully writing and submitting my weekly “Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow” column, I finally failed last week.
That was after writing and submitting an even dozen of columns on a twice a week basis since OpinYon entered its second year.
I failed to write and submit both my Regular and Lite columns for last week.
Actually, I now write four columns a week - two in English for OpinYon and two in Pilipino for Diaryo Pinoy.
A Deadline Writer
The pace was taking its toll on me. I usually write at night. I usually end way past midnight. That means that I’m “puyat” four out of the seven nights of a week.
In spite of that, I have to wake up at 6 am from Monday to Friday to bring my daughter, Maria Teresa Margarita “Cuchie” to work.
I’m a deadline writer and I don’t have a reserve of timeless columns.
So, by hook or by crook, I have to finish my columns even if I’m way past the official deadline.
The problem of the hook and the crook is that at my age, I can no longer make “puyat” until morning.
At a certain point after midnight, not only my body but more so, my mind gives up.
I like to listen to oldies music while writing. I know that it’s time to give up and go to bed when I can write less than a paragraph per song.
Of Laptops & Wi-Fi
I don’t have my own computer. I rely on my son, Manuel Hermilo “Miko” to lend me either his desktop or laptop computer.
Usually, I use the laptop because I can choose my place, table and chair.
When I finish writing and have to Email my column, I have to look for a spot in the second floor of my home where the Wi-Fi signal reaches.
However, more than a month ago, the laptop broke and I was forced to use the desktop.
Then, my troubles multiplied.
I could no longer choose my place, table and chair. I was forced to go down to my son’s room and use his desktop, his computer table and his revolving chair.
Soon, my eyes, my back and my legs all ached.
I could no longer write my column in one seating. I had to write by installments.
I had to rest every two hours. I was submitting my columns later and later until it was the absolute deadline.
Ergo, I failed to submit.
Warm up from a Cold Start
Then, it became a pile up.
In one week, I failed to submit my Friday Diaryo Pinoy column.
Then, I also failed to submit my Monday Regular and Thursday Lite columns.
I rounded out the week by not submitting last Monday’s Diaryo Pinoy column.
So now that I’m back on the ball, I find out that it is difficult to warm up from a cold start.
Since I also missed submitting two of my Pilipino columns for Diaryo Pinoy, where my schedule is Mondays and Fridays, my mind is gone “kalawang” and my fingers feel heavy.
I used to paraphrase the PLDT ad, “Let your fingers do the walking” by saying that for me column writing is, “Let your fingers do the marching.”
Now, I feel that the physical side of writing is more difficult and less healthy than marching.
P-Noy goin' Bananas
While we were taking a well-deserved though enforced break and rest, P-Noy was going bananas.
The island of Luzon was struck by two typhoons – Pedring and Quiel.
P-Noy had just flexed his tourist muscles.
First, he went to the USA. There he succeeded in not having a hot dog, pizza or play station photo op.
Just back from his transpacific sojourn, P-Noy went to Japan. There, he donated a million dollars for the victims of the March 11 Japan earthquake and tsunami.
P-Noy did a Linggoy
When he came home, P-Noy disappeared from view. Maybe, like Linggoy, he got exhausted from his travels and took a break.
However, Linggoy only has to answer to his Publisher and Editor.
P-Noy has almost a hundred million bosses. Several millions of them were in distress due to the floodwaters caused by Pedring, Quiel and the monsoons.
They were waiting for P-Noy or, at the very least, his relief goods and rescue efforts.
P-Noy is the President. Linggoy is only Linggoy.
Linggoy, a Blue Baby
Jose Luis “Linggoy” was born in the morning of October 12, 1948 at the Lourdes Hospital along Shaw Blvd. in Bacood or Santa Mesa, Manila. His parents were Rosa Zaragoza Araneta and Manuel Tuason Alcuaz.
Rosa was the daughter of Carmen Zaragoza and Gregorio Araneta of Iloilo. Manuel was the son of Aurelia Tuason and Santiago Alcuaz of Intramuros, Manila.
Linggoy was almost a blue baby because of his delivery weight of over 12 lbs.
Since I am turning only 63, and not 75, 50 or 60, it is not mandatory for me to have a big celebration.
I had a big one when I turned 60 in 2008.
I cannot remember how big my 50th birthday party was.
Earlier, in mid-1996, I treated myself and my wife, Baby, to a trip to the USA.
I do hope that I can make it to my 75th Birthday.
Couples for Christ
I’m not sure what kind of a party I will have on Wednesday or Friday or Saturday or Sunday.
While I was asleep during our last bi-monthly Couples for Christ Household Prayer Meeting, my wife agreed to host the one at our home on my birthday.
She must have assumed that we would not have the resources to have a big celebration.
Our CFC Household has decreased from the original seven couples in 2003 despite three additional couples to the present four and a half.
The half is the widow of our Nonong and Letty Ignacio leader couple. The husband died at the UST Hospital last March on the eve of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan.
Of Deaths & Births
In 2003, when we were in our first year, two members immediately died.
The first was Jojo Ong, the wife of Andrew Ong. Jojo died of cancer in August or September. Andrew owns the Kirin Restaurant in Boni High Street in Ft. Bonifacio Global City.
The second was Dr. Cesar Reyes. Cesar graduated and practiced Medicine at the UST. He died of Heart Disease. He owned a hospital in Paranaque. His widow is Atty. Emma Reyes, the Secretary General of the Senate.
If I don’t get to throw a party, I will have other parties to go to.
Last Saturday was the 60th birthday of my oftentimes best friend, Herman “Mentong” Tiu Laurel.
It was also the 51st (Forgive me!) birthday of whistle blower par excellence, Sandra Cam.
Then, I can also expect to cut costs by having a joint family birthday party with my sister-in-law, Maria Rosario “Chona” Ramos Ahorro who celebrates her birthday on Oct. 13.
Happy Birthday too, to Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato “Rene” Coronado Corona who celebrates his birthday on Oct. 15.
Rene was my classmate in the Ateneo grade school, high school and college.. We were both cadet officers in the AFPMT as well as the AFROTC.
Linggoy Alcuaz
10/10-12/2011
After a full year, a month and a week of faithfully writing and submitting my weekly “Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow” column, I finally failed last week.
That was after writing and submitting an even dozen of columns on a twice a week basis since OpinYon entered its second year.
I failed to write and submit both my Regular and Lite columns for last week.
Actually, I now write four columns a week - two in English for OpinYon and two in Pilipino for Diaryo Pinoy.
A Deadline Writer
The pace was taking its toll on me. I usually write at night. I usually end way past midnight. That means that I’m “puyat” four out of the seven nights of a week.
In spite of that, I have to wake up at 6 am from Monday to Friday to bring my daughter, Maria Teresa Margarita “Cuchie” to work.
I’m a deadline writer and I don’t have a reserve of timeless columns.
So, by hook or by crook, I have to finish my columns even if I’m way past the official deadline.
The problem of the hook and the crook is that at my age, I can no longer make “puyat” until morning.
At a certain point after midnight, not only my body but more so, my mind gives up.
I like to listen to oldies music while writing. I know that it’s time to give up and go to bed when I can write less than a paragraph per song.
Of Laptops & Wi-Fi
I don’t have my own computer. I rely on my son, Manuel Hermilo “Miko” to lend me either his desktop or laptop computer.
Usually, I use the laptop because I can choose my place, table and chair.
When I finish writing and have to Email my column, I have to look for a spot in the second floor of my home where the Wi-Fi signal reaches.
However, more than a month ago, the laptop broke and I was forced to use the desktop.
Then, my troubles multiplied.
I could no longer choose my place, table and chair. I was forced to go down to my son’s room and use his desktop, his computer table and his revolving chair.
Soon, my eyes, my back and my legs all ached.
I could no longer write my column in one seating. I had to write by installments.
I had to rest every two hours. I was submitting my columns later and later until it was the absolute deadline.
Ergo, I failed to submit.
Warm up from a Cold Start
Then, it became a pile up.
In one week, I failed to submit my Friday Diaryo Pinoy column.
Then, I also failed to submit my Monday Regular and Thursday Lite columns.
I rounded out the week by not submitting last Monday’s Diaryo Pinoy column.
So now that I’m back on the ball, I find out that it is difficult to warm up from a cold start.
Since I also missed submitting two of my Pilipino columns for Diaryo Pinoy, where my schedule is Mondays and Fridays, my mind is gone “kalawang” and my fingers feel heavy.
I used to paraphrase the PLDT ad, “Let your fingers do the walking” by saying that for me column writing is, “Let your fingers do the marching.”
Now, I feel that the physical side of writing is more difficult and less healthy than marching.
P-Noy goin' Bananas
While we were taking a well-deserved though enforced break and rest, P-Noy was going bananas.
The island of Luzon was struck by two typhoons – Pedring and Quiel.
P-Noy had just flexed his tourist muscles.
First, he went to the USA. There he succeeded in not having a hot dog, pizza or play station photo op.
Just back from his transpacific sojourn, P-Noy went to Japan. There, he donated a million dollars for the victims of the March 11 Japan earthquake and tsunami.
P-Noy did a Linggoy
When he came home, P-Noy disappeared from view. Maybe, like Linggoy, he got exhausted from his travels and took a break.
However, Linggoy only has to answer to his Publisher and Editor.
P-Noy has almost a hundred million bosses. Several millions of them were in distress due to the floodwaters caused by Pedring, Quiel and the monsoons.
They were waiting for P-Noy or, at the very least, his relief goods and rescue efforts.
P-Noy is the President. Linggoy is only Linggoy.
Linggoy, a Blue Baby
Jose Luis “Linggoy” was born in the morning of October 12, 1948 at the Lourdes Hospital along Shaw Blvd. in Bacood or Santa Mesa, Manila. His parents were Rosa Zaragoza Araneta and Manuel Tuason Alcuaz.
Rosa was the daughter of Carmen Zaragoza and Gregorio Araneta of Iloilo. Manuel was the son of Aurelia Tuason and Santiago Alcuaz of Intramuros, Manila.
Linggoy was almost a blue baby because of his delivery weight of over 12 lbs.
Since I am turning only 63, and not 75, 50 or 60, it is not mandatory for me to have a big celebration.
I had a big one when I turned 60 in 2008.
I cannot remember how big my 50th birthday party was.
Earlier, in mid-1996, I treated myself and my wife, Baby, to a trip to the USA.
I do hope that I can make it to my 75th Birthday.
Couples for Christ
I’m not sure what kind of a party I will have on Wednesday or Friday or Saturday or Sunday.
While I was asleep during our last bi-monthly Couples for Christ Household Prayer Meeting, my wife agreed to host the one at our home on my birthday.
She must have assumed that we would not have the resources to have a big celebration.
Our CFC Household has decreased from the original seven couples in 2003 despite three additional couples to the present four and a half.
The half is the widow of our Nonong and Letty Ignacio leader couple. The husband died at the UST Hospital last March on the eve of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan.
Of Deaths & Births
In 2003, when we were in our first year, two members immediately died.
The first was Jojo Ong, the wife of Andrew Ong. Jojo died of cancer in August or September. Andrew owns the Kirin Restaurant in Boni High Street in Ft. Bonifacio Global City.
The second was Dr. Cesar Reyes. Cesar graduated and practiced Medicine at the UST. He died of Heart Disease. He owned a hospital in Paranaque. His widow is Atty. Emma Reyes, the Secretary General of the Senate.
If I don’t get to throw a party, I will have other parties to go to.
Last Saturday was the 60th birthday of my oftentimes best friend, Herman “Mentong” Tiu Laurel.
It was also the 51st (Forgive me!) birthday of whistle blower par excellence, Sandra Cam.
Then, I can also expect to cut costs by having a joint family birthday party with my sister-in-law, Maria Rosario “Chona” Ramos Ahorro who celebrates her birthday on Oct. 13.
Happy Birthday too, to Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato “Rene” Coronado Corona who celebrates his birthday on Oct. 15.
Rene was my classmate in the Ateneo grade school, high school and college.. We were both cadet officers in the AFPMT as well as the AFROTC.
Disconnect
DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
10/10/2011
While we are not going to look up the medical name for the malady of the disconnection between one’s brain and motor functions anymore, lest we be accused again of casting psychiatric aspersions, we can see many of its symptoms in government.
Of course, the Aquino III government did right by ordering the National Food Authority (NFA) “to buy storm-damaged palay to help the deluged farmers of Northern and Central Luzon. At least four million people were displaced by the winds and floods of two successive typhoons, and a season’s crop was soaked black. Flood waters have not receded in many areas and a very bleak Christmas awaits many of the stricken families. The order to salvage what can be saved of these soaked palays can only be done with the NFA ready to intervene in the market.
Yet, as Aquino III is ordering the state agency to perform its “Good Samaritan” act, two of his top honchos in Budget and Finance — namely, Butch Abad and Cesar Purisima — are doggedly hammering the abolition and privatization of the NFA.
For one, a fully privatized grains sector will not have any inclination to do public service in times of crisis. What is most likely is that it will wait for desperate typhoon and flood victims to plead for their soaked palays to be bought as animal feed as it hoards good rice stocks in order to raise prices.
If Aquino III were without the NFA today, who could he possibly have relied on to assist these unfortunate millions of rice farmers? This is the lesson he should pick up from the unfortunate disasters that have struck us the past two weeks. This is the very argument he should use to silence Abad and Purisima as this comes from wiser and far more experienced and dedicated voices, such as the NFA leaders and employees’ union, and even his own appointed administrator who has since become a defender of the NFA’s vital role in our economy.
So why are Abad and Purisima carrying on with their campaign by dishing out lies against the NFA, distorting its actual financial condition in order to project an utterly hopeless and corrupt image of it?
A fully privatized food, rice, and grains sector will mean the loss of our national food sovereignty and security, as the power over food supplies will be transferred completely to profit-seeking local and transnational traders.
Without food sovereignty and security, the nation will be enslaved to private parties who control its very means of survival and, consequently, compel it to give and do anything in exchange.
Abad and Purisima’s track record betrays clear servility to foreign interests, from pushing the IMF-WB’s Electric Power Industry Reform Act (Epira) to the maintenance of the debt-based financial system despite the overflowing funds lying idle in the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.
Elsewhere, there’s another disconnect: The Meralco (Manila Electric Co.) rate hike for October of P0.09 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) at a time when global fuel prices are going down, amid a surplus of hydro-power that should be evident with the hydro-electric dams overflowing.
The oil and natural gas-fueled independent power producers (IPPs) have indexed prices that defy the laws of supply and demand in the world, which apply only to the Philippines.
The official reason for the increase in rates, Meralco says, is that “the generation charge component, which it collects for its power suppliers, will rise by 14.19 centavos per kWh, but this hike will be partly offset by a 5-centavo decrease in the distributor’s own charges, resulting in a lower net increase…” Well, this is just a lie, in complicity with the Energy Regulatory Commission, as Meralco’s Maximum Average Price should not be P1.58 but P0.90/kWh.
Further, it says, “the increase in the generation charge is due to the use of more expensive liquid fuel by First Gen Corp.’s natural gas plants, following a supply restriction at Malampaya natural gas field from Sept. 22 to 25.” This is, of course, another BS.
Why should there be a supply restriction from Malampaya’s cheaper natural gas plant when we all know that it even exports a great part of its production?
Filipino power consumers should have the priority in the use of Malampaya natural gas; and this explanation from Meralco, which is tied to the Malampaya gas by sweetheart supply contracts from the Lopez era, does not go far enough into details to justify the hike.
Malacañang, in the wake of Meralco’s announcement and knowing how sensitive the issue already is, quickly follows up by saying that November power prices will see a decline, as if to show some concern.
But if it is really concerned, what Malacañang should do is to dig deeper into the present Meralco claims to find out the truth while compelling the power company to hold off its rate hike after a thorough hearing on its claims.
Meanwhile, the Code-NGO PEACe Bonds of P10 billion will be paid on Oct. 18 with P35 billion of the taxpayers’ money. The loan’s first beneficiaries were the conspirators of the Edsa II coup d’etat — the Ayala foundation, the Ateneo, NGOs associated with the Caucus of Development NGOs (Code-NGO), the Camacho siblings (one of whom is Gloria Arroyo’s former Finance Secretary), and some others.
This was plunder of the highest degree by people associated with Cory Aquino, from Dan Songco (who managed Cory’s NGOs) to Dinky Soliman et al. The funds from this transaction replaced former foreign funding that was substantially withdrawn from the Philippines when the US shifted its soft intensity conflict projects to other parts of the globe, leaving a few hundred NGO workers now making up another kind of NGO or Neo-Governmental Organizations as the subversive backbone against the Republic. This parallel bureaucracy (as seen in the Conditional Cash Transfer network) is intended to replace career civil service workers, with Aquino III as the president of this parallel network. Another major disconnect, indeed.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino/Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m. on 1098AM; Talk News TV with HTL, Saturday, 8:15 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8 on “Occupy Wall Street: Lessons for RP”; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
Herman Tiu Laurel
10/10/2011
While we are not going to look up the medical name for the malady of the disconnection between one’s brain and motor functions anymore, lest we be accused again of casting psychiatric aspersions, we can see many of its symptoms in government.
Of course, the Aquino III government did right by ordering the National Food Authority (NFA) “to buy storm-damaged palay to help the deluged farmers of Northern and Central Luzon. At least four million people were displaced by the winds and floods of two successive typhoons, and a season’s crop was soaked black. Flood waters have not receded in many areas and a very bleak Christmas awaits many of the stricken families. The order to salvage what can be saved of these soaked palays can only be done with the NFA ready to intervene in the market.
Yet, as Aquino III is ordering the state agency to perform its “Good Samaritan” act, two of his top honchos in Budget and Finance — namely, Butch Abad and Cesar Purisima — are doggedly hammering the abolition and privatization of the NFA.
For one, a fully privatized grains sector will not have any inclination to do public service in times of crisis. What is most likely is that it will wait for desperate typhoon and flood victims to plead for their soaked palays to be bought as animal feed as it hoards good rice stocks in order to raise prices.
If Aquino III were without the NFA today, who could he possibly have relied on to assist these unfortunate millions of rice farmers? This is the lesson he should pick up from the unfortunate disasters that have struck us the past two weeks. This is the very argument he should use to silence Abad and Purisima as this comes from wiser and far more experienced and dedicated voices, such as the NFA leaders and employees’ union, and even his own appointed administrator who has since become a defender of the NFA’s vital role in our economy.
So why are Abad and Purisima carrying on with their campaign by dishing out lies against the NFA, distorting its actual financial condition in order to project an utterly hopeless and corrupt image of it?
A fully privatized food, rice, and grains sector will mean the loss of our national food sovereignty and security, as the power over food supplies will be transferred completely to profit-seeking local and transnational traders.
Without food sovereignty and security, the nation will be enslaved to private parties who control its very means of survival and, consequently, compel it to give and do anything in exchange.
Abad and Purisima’s track record betrays clear servility to foreign interests, from pushing the IMF-WB’s Electric Power Industry Reform Act (Epira) to the maintenance of the debt-based financial system despite the overflowing funds lying idle in the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.
Elsewhere, there’s another disconnect: The Meralco (Manila Electric Co.) rate hike for October of P0.09 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) at a time when global fuel prices are going down, amid a surplus of hydro-power that should be evident with the hydro-electric dams overflowing.
The oil and natural gas-fueled independent power producers (IPPs) have indexed prices that defy the laws of supply and demand in the world, which apply only to the Philippines.
The official reason for the increase in rates, Meralco says, is that “the generation charge component, which it collects for its power suppliers, will rise by 14.19 centavos per kWh, but this hike will be partly offset by a 5-centavo decrease in the distributor’s own charges, resulting in a lower net increase…” Well, this is just a lie, in complicity with the Energy Regulatory Commission, as Meralco’s Maximum Average Price should not be P1.58 but P0.90/kWh.
Further, it says, “the increase in the generation charge is due to the use of more expensive liquid fuel by First Gen Corp.’s natural gas plants, following a supply restriction at Malampaya natural gas field from Sept. 22 to 25.” This is, of course, another BS.
Why should there be a supply restriction from Malampaya’s cheaper natural gas plant when we all know that it even exports a great part of its production?
Filipino power consumers should have the priority in the use of Malampaya natural gas; and this explanation from Meralco, which is tied to the Malampaya gas by sweetheart supply contracts from the Lopez era, does not go far enough into details to justify the hike.
Malacañang, in the wake of Meralco’s announcement and knowing how sensitive the issue already is, quickly follows up by saying that November power prices will see a decline, as if to show some concern.
But if it is really concerned, what Malacañang should do is to dig deeper into the present Meralco claims to find out the truth while compelling the power company to hold off its rate hike after a thorough hearing on its claims.
Meanwhile, the Code-NGO PEACe Bonds of P10 billion will be paid on Oct. 18 with P35 billion of the taxpayers’ money. The loan’s first beneficiaries were the conspirators of the Edsa II coup d’etat — the Ayala foundation, the Ateneo, NGOs associated with the Caucus of Development NGOs (Code-NGO), the Camacho siblings (one of whom is Gloria Arroyo’s former Finance Secretary), and some others.
This was plunder of the highest degree by people associated with Cory Aquino, from Dan Songco (who managed Cory’s NGOs) to Dinky Soliman et al. The funds from this transaction replaced former foreign funding that was substantially withdrawn from the Philippines when the US shifted its soft intensity conflict projects to other parts of the globe, leaving a few hundred NGO workers now making up another kind of NGO or Neo-Governmental Organizations as the subversive backbone against the Republic. This parallel bureaucracy (as seen in the Conditional Cash Transfer network) is intended to replace career civil service workers, with Aquino III as the president of this parallel network. Another major disconnect, indeed.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino/Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m. on 1098AM; Talk News TV with HTL, Saturday, 8:15 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8 on “Occupy Wall Street: Lessons for RP”; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
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