DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
1/30/2012
As I wrote last December 2011, the “useful idiot” is pursuing his autocratic mission for the master albeit very ineptly in all aspects but one — kowtowing to everything the US ultra-war hawks want. But in everything else, the idiot is bumbling along and nobody knows if he will get through to getting the preliminary steps done at all.
The idiot’s first step toward consolidating his autocratic power has been a disaster as the public perception of his impeachment crusade against the Supreme Court (SC) Chief Justice (CJ) has stalled badly, with inept prosecutors, the ridicule from senator-judges, and simple defense panel legal repartees to prosecution offensives.
Mainstream media have tried their best to support the idiot; but they themselves look idiotic with headlines (such as “100 witnesses against Chief Justice Corona”) to help the anti-CJ psy-war that end up making the CJ really look like the oppressed underdog.
Still, no matter how wanting they all are, the idiot and his cohorts are really making great strides in opening the Philippines to future regional conflict by inviting US bases back!
The day after reports came out about the idiot’s invitation, the US responds with headlines here that say, “US lauds troops offer but won’t return bases.” After the Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) lie to justify the mission attacking Iraq (“Enduring Freedom”) and the R2P (Right to Protect) “No Fly Zone” in Libya, which became a merciless bombing campaign of civilian population centers — with estimated civilian deaths running to 50,000 — do they expect Filipinos and the world to just take their word for it?
Like Bill Clinton who once said “I did not have sex with that woman” despite Monica Lewinsky having serviced him, the US State Department can say “no troops bases” with a straight face because it will not be troop bases but military drone bases that will be set up in the Philippines while our Armed Forces personnel are used as cannon fodder, with antiquated and defenseless Hamilton cutters and an F-16 squadron designed to lure the regional “enemy” into a flimsy US ruse.
One hears even “progressive” intellectuals make the alibi for a revival of US presence in the region on the pretext that China will be a superpower soon to replace US imperialism. But that is a superficial thesis. The era of one, overarching superpower monopolizing the world or a region is a thing of the past in this present solidly multi-polar world.
China can never hope to be an overbearing imperialist power even if it wanted to because the other centers of power in the region (such as India, Russia and emerging ones like Indonesia, as well as others like Brazil in Latin America) will no longer allow any such singular power to dominate.
The only one that is aspiring to reestablish its slipping status as the singular superpower in the world after the fall of the Soviet Union is the US. With its lapdog North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato), it has tried to start its “Project for a New American Century” with little success, sputtering in Iraq and Afghanistan—already being described as the new “Vietnams.”
Even in Libya, the US-Nato’s R2P victim is now turning out to be a liability to the Western powers as anti-imperialist movements have begun to fight back. Last week the anti-National Transition Council (NTC) forces retook Bani Walid and drove out Nato’s useful idiots (who are getting paid the pieces of silver promised them while $100 billion of Libya’s reserves, which were frozen during the anti-Gaddafi campaign, are sitting in US, French, Italian and other Western banks). Only idiots can believe these Western powers and agree to work under them.
This week Iran may impose its oil ban on the European Union (EU) to preempt any US-EU oil embargo threats, crippling the EU (and us in the process) while India and China will stop using US dollars to buy oil from Iran and use currency swaps and gold. And as South Korea and Japan are not expected to comply with the Western oil embargo, the US is now fast becoming a paper tiger, with the world much better off with the many powers emerging.
As such, the Philippines should stop the US’ useful idiot here from pushing this country into an unwanted conflict with China. Vietnam is now in solid negotiations with China for a fair sharing of the bounties of the South China Sea.
David Brown writes in Asia Times, “Even more surprising is that … based on a legal regime and principles defined by international law, including the UN Convention on Law of the Sea (Unclos), Vietnam and China would ‘make efforts to seek basic and long-term solutions acceptable to both sides for sea-related disputes’… ‘actively discuss(ing) co-operation for mutual development.’”
Last Jan. 27, Boris Volkhonsky wrote on GlobalResearch that “First of all, a network of special operation bases and the use of drones signify that the US would be able to attack any adversary anywhere, not bothering too much about whether they are attacking a sovereign state… Sources say that the US plans to use such bases in Australia and in the Philippines, which reflects a new emphasis Washington is laying on confronting China along its eastern borders. With drones and special bases being deployed all over the globe and especially in the vicinity of such a sensitive area as the South China Sea, it gives the US new opportunities to further alienate an unlimited number of nations.”
So even as the real game is now shaping up to be allowing “drone bases” at various points in the Philippines, the useful idiot in Malacañang still will not take his cue from this — useful idiot indeed!
(Tune in to 1098AM, dwAD, Sulo ng Pilipino/Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m.; watch Destiny Cable GNN’s HTL edition of Talk News TV, Saturdays, 8:15 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11:15 p.m., on “US drone bases in the Philippines;” visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
Monday, January 30, 2012
Sunday, January 29, 2012
A costly provocation
BACKBENCHER
Rod P. Kapunan
1/28-29/2012
Puppet states having a sense of decency always try to keep under wraps their uncomplimentary status because they still want to be accorded a degree of respectability by the international community. They strive to keep that even if their sovereignty is visibly absent to qualify them as independent states. In our case, we do the exact opposite of blindly obeying whatever that criminal state would want us to do, like antagonizing China without our national leadership weighing whether our holding of a joint military exercise in the disputed Spratly islands would do us good, or would in fact push us closer to confronting our giant neighbor.
There had been antecedent events in our relations with the US as when we expected them to be on our side, but turning out siding with the British created federation over our claim on Sabah. Many could read Washington’s motivation in wanting to create a deep wedge between this country and China. So, as we foolishly isolate ourselves from that most economically progressive country in the world today, our economy that is hanging by the thread suffers because of our self-inflicted denial to avail of the benefits of the “economic spin off” from what the Chinese call “chi,” or the energy generated by progress.
As our relations with China deteriorate under the auspices of this empty-headed government of President Aquino for, in the words of the late Senator Claro Recto, our canine devotion to allow ourselves to be pitted against a country against which we could never hope to win, the US takes advantage in our stead. Aside from the hard reality that we could not expect help from the Americans for the objective reason that their economy is in shambles, the US badly needs China to resuscitate its own economy. In the end, we forfeit by technicality whatever economic gain we could obtain from the booming Chinese economy because of our blind allegiance to a country that in all these years obstructed all our attempts to industrialize.
Political analysts could clearly see that our current policy towards China is a US formulated policy. Instead of questioning that, the Aquino government rather sounded the bugle for our soldiers to get ready for war. The unpleasant thing about our hallow belligerency is we are the ones spending for our own defense preparations, a dubious policy not seen by the government as our contribution to keep afloat the bankrupt US economy. A second look at that approach of sowing threat to the region’s security and political stability is it could trigger an arms build up, a situation that could be exploited by the US to sell more of their costly weapons to countries in the South China Sea that have been agitated by Western media propaganda of China’s alleged hegemonistic ambition.
Right now, China stands as our number two trading partner next to Japan. In the first half of 2010, we accounted $13.1 billion in our trade with that country or an increase by 52.6 percent from the 2009 posted at $8.6 billion. Most importantly, we continue to enjoy a favorable trade balance, that for the same period we accounted a total of $7.5 billion in imports, while the Philippines exported to China a total of $5.6 billion. The indubitable fact is without China, our economy would have dived deep into the sinkhole a long time ago.
For all that we have been saying about those cheap goods from China, it was those cheap goods we look down with disdain that allowed our people to wade through the economic difficulties to stretch their purchasing power to buy goods they could not otherwise afford for the same goods made in the US and Europe. Cheap imports somehow slowed down the drain to our much needed foreign exchange earnings by way of inter country import substitution for cheaper products.
On the contrary, the upgrading of our defense capabilities would not help our economy. Under the present situation when the world is reeling from the brunt of the economic downturn, our massive purchase of arms is both criminal and treasonous. Undeniably, it is this poor-as-a-rat country that is subsidizing the US economy that has been sacked empty by the combined action of those bank looters in Wall Street and war maniacs in Pentagon.
Even the purchase by President Aquino of that mothballed Hamilton Class US cutter renamed Gen. Gregorio del Pilar for a cost of P450 million with an added P120 million operational cost for the next two years has raised much skepticism as to what kind of defense shield President Aquino wants to build. The government ignored the fact that cutters of that class are mainly used for customs services; to intercept smugglers, sea poachers, for patrol, but not to engage enemy ships in possible sea battle. Not satisfied, the government is also planning to acquire another for the same cost.
Nonetheless, the amount we spent to purchase a costly second-hand cutter does not seem to match with the depressing truth that many of our people skip their meals for want of nothing to eat. If we are to consider the Social Weather Stations report as of September 2011, it reported that one in five households, or 21.5 percent, or an estimated 4.3 million families nationwide experience having nothing to eat in the last three months. That means our expenditures for armaments simply do not tally to our priority of whether to feed our people or to fight China.
Even the proposed acquisition of F-16 is quite staggering with each costing about (F-16 A/B) P627.8 million or P808.4 million for the newer version (F-16 C/D) a piece. So, it we purchase a dozen of them, that would cost us P7.534 billion or P9.7 billion, respectively. That means, even if we allocate our entire budget just to purchase those weapons of war, that would not suffice. What is a dozen against China’s array of modern aircraft like their 200 SU-27,150 SU-30, 100 J0-11 and an undisclosed number J-20 Stealth fighter bomber. Worse, Wikipedia states that the F-16s had been in the US Air Force inventory since 1976 or for 36 years already, and had long stopped purchasing those aircrafts that today is being sold at astronomical cost despite its outdated technology. Maybe, it would be most prudent if we think of the 30.6 million Filipinos or 6.12 million families who are suffering from poverty as estimated by the Population Commission.
As said, China will never consider us a threat to its national security. For them to naively think we are is a big joke. China is an emerging world-class superpower no country could stop. It has a much improved weapons system, and there is no way we could match that. The only way we could compel China to change their thinking of us is when we decide to build our own nuclear bomb. That then could radically alter the balance in the region, and China need not be provoked to launch a pre-emptive strike against a fanatical puppet like the Philippines.
(rodkap@yahoo.com.ph)
Rod P. Kapunan
1/28-29/2012
Puppet states having a sense of decency always try to keep under wraps their uncomplimentary status because they still want to be accorded a degree of respectability by the international community. They strive to keep that even if their sovereignty is visibly absent to qualify them as independent states. In our case, we do the exact opposite of blindly obeying whatever that criminal state would want us to do, like antagonizing China without our national leadership weighing whether our holding of a joint military exercise in the disputed Spratly islands would do us good, or would in fact push us closer to confronting our giant neighbor.
There had been antecedent events in our relations with the US as when we expected them to be on our side, but turning out siding with the British created federation over our claim on Sabah. Many could read Washington’s motivation in wanting to create a deep wedge between this country and China. So, as we foolishly isolate ourselves from that most economically progressive country in the world today, our economy that is hanging by the thread suffers because of our self-inflicted denial to avail of the benefits of the “economic spin off” from what the Chinese call “chi,” or the energy generated by progress.
As our relations with China deteriorate under the auspices of this empty-headed government of President Aquino for, in the words of the late Senator Claro Recto, our canine devotion to allow ourselves to be pitted against a country against which we could never hope to win, the US takes advantage in our stead. Aside from the hard reality that we could not expect help from the Americans for the objective reason that their economy is in shambles, the US badly needs China to resuscitate its own economy. In the end, we forfeit by technicality whatever economic gain we could obtain from the booming Chinese economy because of our blind allegiance to a country that in all these years obstructed all our attempts to industrialize.
Political analysts could clearly see that our current policy towards China is a US formulated policy. Instead of questioning that, the Aquino government rather sounded the bugle for our soldiers to get ready for war. The unpleasant thing about our hallow belligerency is we are the ones spending for our own defense preparations, a dubious policy not seen by the government as our contribution to keep afloat the bankrupt US economy. A second look at that approach of sowing threat to the region’s security and political stability is it could trigger an arms build up, a situation that could be exploited by the US to sell more of their costly weapons to countries in the South China Sea that have been agitated by Western media propaganda of China’s alleged hegemonistic ambition.
Right now, China stands as our number two trading partner next to Japan. In the first half of 2010, we accounted $13.1 billion in our trade with that country or an increase by 52.6 percent from the 2009 posted at $8.6 billion. Most importantly, we continue to enjoy a favorable trade balance, that for the same period we accounted a total of $7.5 billion in imports, while the Philippines exported to China a total of $5.6 billion. The indubitable fact is without China, our economy would have dived deep into the sinkhole a long time ago.
For all that we have been saying about those cheap goods from China, it was those cheap goods we look down with disdain that allowed our people to wade through the economic difficulties to stretch their purchasing power to buy goods they could not otherwise afford for the same goods made in the US and Europe. Cheap imports somehow slowed down the drain to our much needed foreign exchange earnings by way of inter country import substitution for cheaper products.
On the contrary, the upgrading of our defense capabilities would not help our economy. Under the present situation when the world is reeling from the brunt of the economic downturn, our massive purchase of arms is both criminal and treasonous. Undeniably, it is this poor-as-a-rat country that is subsidizing the US economy that has been sacked empty by the combined action of those bank looters in Wall Street and war maniacs in Pentagon.
Even the purchase by President Aquino of that mothballed Hamilton Class US cutter renamed Gen. Gregorio del Pilar for a cost of P450 million with an added P120 million operational cost for the next two years has raised much skepticism as to what kind of defense shield President Aquino wants to build. The government ignored the fact that cutters of that class are mainly used for customs services; to intercept smugglers, sea poachers, for patrol, but not to engage enemy ships in possible sea battle. Not satisfied, the government is also planning to acquire another for the same cost.
Nonetheless, the amount we spent to purchase a costly second-hand cutter does not seem to match with the depressing truth that many of our people skip their meals for want of nothing to eat. If we are to consider the Social Weather Stations report as of September 2011, it reported that one in five households, or 21.5 percent, or an estimated 4.3 million families nationwide experience having nothing to eat in the last three months. That means our expenditures for armaments simply do not tally to our priority of whether to feed our people or to fight China.
Even the proposed acquisition of F-16 is quite staggering with each costing about (F-16 A/B) P627.8 million or P808.4 million for the newer version (F-16 C/D) a piece. So, it we purchase a dozen of them, that would cost us P7.534 billion or P9.7 billion, respectively. That means, even if we allocate our entire budget just to purchase those weapons of war, that would not suffice. What is a dozen against China’s array of modern aircraft like their 200 SU-27,150 SU-30, 100 J0-11 and an undisclosed number J-20 Stealth fighter bomber. Worse, Wikipedia states that the F-16s had been in the US Air Force inventory since 1976 or for 36 years already, and had long stopped purchasing those aircrafts that today is being sold at astronomical cost despite its outdated technology. Maybe, it would be most prudent if we think of the 30.6 million Filipinos or 6.12 million families who are suffering from poverty as estimated by the Population Commission.
As said, China will never consider us a threat to its national security. For them to naively think we are is a big joke. China is an emerging world-class superpower no country could stop. It has a much improved weapons system, and there is no way we could match that. The only way we could compel China to change their thinking of us is when we decide to build our own nuclear bomb. That then could radically alter the balance in the region, and China need not be provoked to launch a pre-emptive strike against a fanatical puppet like the Philippines.
(rodkap@yahoo.com.ph)
Friday, January 27, 2012
RP must learn from Ecuador
DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
1/27/2012
Other than the letters to its name, the Philippines has other things that are more plentiful than Ecuador: Nine times more population; 10 percent more land area; a sea territory that is far more vast, etc. Yet, Ecuador is much better off in terms of per capita gross domestic product (GDP), with $8,327 compared to our $4,111; or its higher Human Development Index (HDI) of 0.72 compared to our 0.64, among other statistics.
In addition, one key difference will make the Filipino people see the light of day — that is, if they would cease to be mindlessly dependent on mainstream media. This sad comparison centers on a recent announcement on the Philippine government’s share of Malampaya oil profits totaling $1.1 billion, which translates to only 10 percent of the gas facility’s total earnings for 2011. Ecuador, in contrast, gets an astounding 87-percent share of gross revenues today from oil extracted by foreign companies. So what accounts for the Philippines’ sordid plight?
If only we had the same tough pro-people, pro-nation leadership as Ecuador under its progressive President Rafael Correa, the Philippines would also have a just share of its natural and national patrimony. If RP had someone like Correa today, the people would be enjoying not just a $1.1-billion share from Malampaya but around $8.8 billion (equivalent to P360 billion), or about the entire sum of the yearly allocation for interest payments on our foreign debt. If only we had this money in our hands, then Congress could have had the means to budget the principal repayment of our foreign debt in order to wipe this out in a few years’ time.
Ecuador did not always have this vastly pro-people arrangement with the transnational oil companies in its country. Before 2007, it only had a 13-percent share of revenues from its oil fields. All that changed with the victory of a nationalist leadership. And this exciting and welcome development for all Ecuadorians was chronicled in Jayat Ghosh’s “Could Ecuador be the most radical and exciting place on Earth?” in The Guardian.
As a backgrounder, the then 47-year-old Correa was elected in 2007 on an anti-trapo platform after a year of then Vice-President Alfredo Palacio’s transition government, which took over from Lucio Gutiérrez, who was ousted by a “citizens’ movement” protesting his administration’s failures to deliver on land reform, lower unemployment, social services and historical exploitation by the oligarchy.
By December 2008, Correa declared Ecuador’s national debt illegitimate for having been contracted by previous corrupt and despotic regimes. And as he pledged to fight creditors in international courts, he succeeded in reducing the debt before even paying any of it off.
Correa then brought his country into the fold of the Venezuela-led Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas in June 2009. All these policies were, of course, anathema to the US. Thus, a police-led coup that led to the Ecuadorian leader’s kidnapping was launched — with Correa thankfully restored after being rescued by the military. But this by no means deterred him from renegotiating contracts with foreign oil companies, thereby completely changing the rules by December 2010.
Foreign oil firms, which used to pay just over a percentage of their profits to the national government through taxes, were made service providers instead and paid a set fee for each barrel of oil extracted (at about $35 per barrel); the national government then kept everything above that, which allowed it to profit whenever oil prices increased.
Over and above his achievements in the oil sector, Correa also dramatically raised the corporate tax share in the total pie from 35 to 40 percent. These increases were then “put to good use in infrastructure investment and social spending,” raising Ecuador’s proportion of public investment to GDP to 10 percent — the highest in Latin America and the Caribbean — while doubling social spending since 2006, enabling progress toward free education and free health care for all.
Ghosh gushes, “All this may sound too good to be true, and certainly the process of transformation has only just begun. There are bound to be conflicts with those whose profits and power are threatened, as well as other hurdles along the way. But for those who believe that we are not condemned to the gloomy status quo, and that societies can do things differently, what is happening in Ecuador provides inspiration and even guidance. The rest of the world has much to learn from this ongoing radical experiment.”
Here in the Philippines, we have a scion of a cacique family in power who epitomizes a class of people whom Correa fought and overcame to launch the “radical and exciting” changes benefiting the Ecuadorian nation today.
Filipinos need the same type of leadership as the new Latin American leaders like Correa, Hugo Chavez (Venezuela), Fernando Lugo (Paraguay), Dilma Rousseff (Brazil), or Cristina Fernández (Argentina), who continue to push their countries forward with nationalist and pro-people policies.
While Ecuador wrested the just and rightful bounties of its oil wealth from foreign hands and gave them to its people, RP’s past and present governments have merely been in cahoots with Royal Dutch Shell and Chevron, allowing additional investments in Malampaya to dilute the country’s already measly 10-percent share — when the fact is all these “investments” were derived from Malampaya profits courtesy of Filipino power consumers, who have been paying for overpriced electricity through natural gas plants managed by a big oligarchic family.
Just the same, pressure from the likes of Energy Secretary Rene Almendras and his ilk continues for the privatization of the state-owned Philippine National Oil Co.-Exploration Corp. (PNOC-EC), which represents government’s share in Malampaya.
And so, as our country’s senators are caught up in impeachment rapture, the plunder of our nation continues unabated.
(Tune in to 1098AM, dwAD, Sulo ng Pilipino/Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m.; watch Destiny Cable GNN’s HTL edition of Talk News TV, Saturdays, 8:15 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11:15 p.m., on “New proofs of Hocus PCOS;” visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
Herman Tiu Laurel
1/27/2012
Other than the letters to its name, the Philippines has other things that are more plentiful than Ecuador: Nine times more population; 10 percent more land area; a sea territory that is far more vast, etc. Yet, Ecuador is much better off in terms of per capita gross domestic product (GDP), with $8,327 compared to our $4,111; or its higher Human Development Index (HDI) of 0.72 compared to our 0.64, among other statistics.
In addition, one key difference will make the Filipino people see the light of day — that is, if they would cease to be mindlessly dependent on mainstream media. This sad comparison centers on a recent announcement on the Philippine government’s share of Malampaya oil profits totaling $1.1 billion, which translates to only 10 percent of the gas facility’s total earnings for 2011. Ecuador, in contrast, gets an astounding 87-percent share of gross revenues today from oil extracted by foreign companies. So what accounts for the Philippines’ sordid plight?
If only we had the same tough pro-people, pro-nation leadership as Ecuador under its progressive President Rafael Correa, the Philippines would also have a just share of its natural and national patrimony. If RP had someone like Correa today, the people would be enjoying not just a $1.1-billion share from Malampaya but around $8.8 billion (equivalent to P360 billion), or about the entire sum of the yearly allocation for interest payments on our foreign debt. If only we had this money in our hands, then Congress could have had the means to budget the principal repayment of our foreign debt in order to wipe this out in a few years’ time.
Ecuador did not always have this vastly pro-people arrangement with the transnational oil companies in its country. Before 2007, it only had a 13-percent share of revenues from its oil fields. All that changed with the victory of a nationalist leadership. And this exciting and welcome development for all Ecuadorians was chronicled in Jayat Ghosh’s “Could Ecuador be the most radical and exciting place on Earth?” in The Guardian.
As a backgrounder, the then 47-year-old Correa was elected in 2007 on an anti-trapo platform after a year of then Vice-President Alfredo Palacio’s transition government, which took over from Lucio Gutiérrez, who was ousted by a “citizens’ movement” protesting his administration’s failures to deliver on land reform, lower unemployment, social services and historical exploitation by the oligarchy.
By December 2008, Correa declared Ecuador’s national debt illegitimate for having been contracted by previous corrupt and despotic regimes. And as he pledged to fight creditors in international courts, he succeeded in reducing the debt before even paying any of it off.
Correa then brought his country into the fold of the Venezuela-led Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas in June 2009. All these policies were, of course, anathema to the US. Thus, a police-led coup that led to the Ecuadorian leader’s kidnapping was launched — with Correa thankfully restored after being rescued by the military. But this by no means deterred him from renegotiating contracts with foreign oil companies, thereby completely changing the rules by December 2010.
Foreign oil firms, which used to pay just over a percentage of their profits to the national government through taxes, were made service providers instead and paid a set fee for each barrel of oil extracted (at about $35 per barrel); the national government then kept everything above that, which allowed it to profit whenever oil prices increased.
Over and above his achievements in the oil sector, Correa also dramatically raised the corporate tax share in the total pie from 35 to 40 percent. These increases were then “put to good use in infrastructure investment and social spending,” raising Ecuador’s proportion of public investment to GDP to 10 percent — the highest in Latin America and the Caribbean — while doubling social spending since 2006, enabling progress toward free education and free health care for all.
Ghosh gushes, “All this may sound too good to be true, and certainly the process of transformation has only just begun. There are bound to be conflicts with those whose profits and power are threatened, as well as other hurdles along the way. But for those who believe that we are not condemned to the gloomy status quo, and that societies can do things differently, what is happening in Ecuador provides inspiration and even guidance. The rest of the world has much to learn from this ongoing radical experiment.”
Here in the Philippines, we have a scion of a cacique family in power who epitomizes a class of people whom Correa fought and overcame to launch the “radical and exciting” changes benefiting the Ecuadorian nation today.
Filipinos need the same type of leadership as the new Latin American leaders like Correa, Hugo Chavez (Venezuela), Fernando Lugo (Paraguay), Dilma Rousseff (Brazil), or Cristina Fernández (Argentina), who continue to push their countries forward with nationalist and pro-people policies.
While Ecuador wrested the just and rightful bounties of its oil wealth from foreign hands and gave them to its people, RP’s past and present governments have merely been in cahoots with Royal Dutch Shell and Chevron, allowing additional investments in Malampaya to dilute the country’s already measly 10-percent share — when the fact is all these “investments” were derived from Malampaya profits courtesy of Filipino power consumers, who have been paying for overpriced electricity through natural gas plants managed by a big oligarchic family.
Just the same, pressure from the likes of Energy Secretary Rene Almendras and his ilk continues for the privatization of the state-owned Philippine National Oil Co.-Exploration Corp. (PNOC-EC), which represents government’s share in Malampaya.
And so, as our country’s senators are caught up in impeachment rapture, the plunder of our nation continues unabated.
(Tune in to 1098AM, dwAD, Sulo ng Pilipino/Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m.; watch Destiny Cable GNN’s HTL edition of Talk News TV, Saturdays, 8:15 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11:15 p.m., on “New proofs of Hocus PCOS;” visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Coup d'état in the Senate?
YESTERDAY, TODAY & TOMORROW
Linggoy Alcuaz
1/23-29/2012
Last Monday, January 16, 2012, Chief Justice Renato “Rene” Coronado Corona faced the Senate sitting as Impeachment Court. However, it is not only his Trial.
The Senate, the House, the P-Noy Aquino Administration, the Armed Forces and the Police, the Mass, as well as the People as Public Opinion, will also undergo their own Trials.
On the eve of the opening of the Trial, a Corona Resignation, as prayed for by P-Noy and his allies, did not happen.
Coup d’état: Senate to Palace
There was instead, a Coup Plot against Senator Juan Ponce Enrile. He has been the Senate President since Manny Villar was ousted in September of 2008.
The Candidate for Senate President of the Plot was Senator Franklin Drilon.
The cost or price of such maneuvers and plots is the enmity of Enrile and his allies, Senators Gregorio Honasan, Jinggoy Estrada and, maybe, even Koko Pimentel.
It is easier to capture the 12 votes needed to win the Senate Presidency than to muster the 16 votes needed to convict Corona.
Making an enemy of Enrile means that the Aquino Administration will not be able to get 16 Senators.
Both a failed as well as a successful Coup now in the Senate may mean or lead to a Palace Coup against the Constitution later on, if and when Corona is acquitted short of the necessary 16 votes.
Drilon, Carpio and PET
Drilon took up law at the UP. He is a member of the Sigma Rho Fraternity.
Senior Associate Justice Antonio Tirol Carpio also took up law at the UP and belongs to the same Fraternity.
He is also a founding partner of the “Firm”, or Carpio, Villaraza and Cruz.
The latter supported Mar Araneta Roxas as a Presidentiable in 2009 and, later, as a Vice Presidential Candidate in the May 10, 2010.
Carpio is the candidate for Chief Justice of the Balay and Liberal faction of the Aquinio Administration.
Roxas has a pending protest against Vice President Jejomar Cabauatan Binay before the Presidential Electoral Tribunal which is composed of the Supreme Court as a whole.
The Chairman of the PET is the Chief Justice.
Corona and Binay
Incumbent Chief Justice Corona studied at the Ateneo from Grade School to High School to College and up to Law School. He is a member of the Utopia Fraternity.
He can be expected to be neutral between the two parties.
Binay studied College and Law at the UP. He is a member of the Alpha Phi Omega (APO) Fraternity.
Sending GMA to jail as well as getting rid of Corona is turning out to be a Pandora’s Box not only for P-Noy but also for all of us Filipinos.
Meanwhile, can life go on for the better?
Or, will we be glued to the formal Impeachment Proceedings at the Senate?
The ‘End All’
Most importantly, can P-Noy debunk the claims made by former President GMA last Thursday, Jan. 12, 2012, at the Manila Hotel regarding the Economy?
Or, is he digging his own grave?
Can the Senate and the House do justice to Corona, Democracy and the Philippines?
Or are the 2013 Elections the end all and be all of this game?
There are 11 Senators who are running for reelection themselves or whose relatives are running in their place.
A vicious cycle
What electoral factor will count the most in influencing their votes at the end of the Trial?
Will the relative popularity of Impeachment and P-Noy as against the unpopularity of GMA and Corona count the most as Sen. Sonny Trillanes seems to be explaining his vote in advance?
Will Pork Barrel and other Administration bribes count as much with the Senators as they did with the Congressmen?
Will the presence of the Iglesia ni Kristo on Corona’s side weigh in?
Will the absence of Cardinal Sin’s successor, Archbishop Chito Tagle, and the Roman Catholic Church’s Hierarchy, the CBCP, on the side of P-Noy and Impeachment weigh at all?
Can the Mass Media and Public Opinion still perform their roles?
Or, are they both caught in a giant vicious circle?
Triple, double lose
The blind leading the blind! One mob leading another mob!
Many people believe that Corona is the one with the most to lose in this game.
Many believe that he is in a lose–lose situation. Yes, that may be very true.
However, the whole country may be in a lose–lose–lose situation.
Why the triple lose rather than just a double lose situation?
Three possible outcomes
As we explained in our column two weeks ago, there are three possible outcomes of a completed Impeachment process.
The first is an acquittal by the Majority – 12 or more votes.
The second is a conviction by 16 or more votes.
There is a more dangerous third option.
Twelve to 15 Senators vote for conviction – a simple majority of the Senate but not enough to satisfy the Constitution’s requirement of 16 votes.
However, P-Noy will accept nothing short of a Constitutional Conviction.
Because of his character flaws, he will concentrate on securing this.
Throughout the Trial, he will not be able to concentrate on other more important things.
He will remain focused on Corona with the jaws of a crocodile or hyena that has caught and bitten live game for their food.
Extraordinary economic woes
Meanwhile, the Economy will be allowed to linger.
Any extraordinary additional problem will throw it into a tailspin.
An Iranian blockade of the Straits of Hormuz will block a substantial portion of the world’s oil supply and send prices through the roof.
What contingency plans does P-Noy have for such an eventuality?
However, even if P-Noy gets what he wants out of Corona’s Impeachment Conviction, it does not assure us of political peace and economic growth.
What it will give us is an imbalanced democracy under the control of an imbalanced leader.
And if that imbalanced President does not get what he wants with Plan A, he will try his Plan B – a Palace Coup against Corona, the Senate Verdict and the Constitution!
Linggoy Alcuaz
1/23-29/2012
Last Monday, January 16, 2012, Chief Justice Renato “Rene” Coronado Corona faced the Senate sitting as Impeachment Court. However, it is not only his Trial.
The Senate, the House, the P-Noy Aquino Administration, the Armed Forces and the Police, the Mass, as well as the People as Public Opinion, will also undergo their own Trials.
On the eve of the opening of the Trial, a Corona Resignation, as prayed for by P-Noy and his allies, did not happen.
Coup d’état: Senate to Palace
There was instead, a Coup Plot against Senator Juan Ponce Enrile. He has been the Senate President since Manny Villar was ousted in September of 2008.
The Candidate for Senate President of the Plot was Senator Franklin Drilon.
The cost or price of such maneuvers and plots is the enmity of Enrile and his allies, Senators Gregorio Honasan, Jinggoy Estrada and, maybe, even Koko Pimentel.
It is easier to capture the 12 votes needed to win the Senate Presidency than to muster the 16 votes needed to convict Corona.
Making an enemy of Enrile means that the Aquino Administration will not be able to get 16 Senators.
Both a failed as well as a successful Coup now in the Senate may mean or lead to a Palace Coup against the Constitution later on, if and when Corona is acquitted short of the necessary 16 votes.
Drilon, Carpio and PET
Drilon took up law at the UP. He is a member of the Sigma Rho Fraternity.
Senior Associate Justice Antonio Tirol Carpio also took up law at the UP and belongs to the same Fraternity.
He is also a founding partner of the “Firm”, or Carpio, Villaraza and Cruz.
The latter supported Mar Araneta Roxas as a Presidentiable in 2009 and, later, as a Vice Presidential Candidate in the May 10, 2010.
Carpio is the candidate for Chief Justice of the Balay and Liberal faction of the Aquinio Administration.
Roxas has a pending protest against Vice President Jejomar Cabauatan Binay before the Presidential Electoral Tribunal which is composed of the Supreme Court as a whole.
The Chairman of the PET is the Chief Justice.
Corona and Binay
Incumbent Chief Justice Corona studied at the Ateneo from Grade School to High School to College and up to Law School. He is a member of the Utopia Fraternity.
He can be expected to be neutral between the two parties.
Binay studied College and Law at the UP. He is a member of the Alpha Phi Omega (APO) Fraternity.
Sending GMA to jail as well as getting rid of Corona is turning out to be a Pandora’s Box not only for P-Noy but also for all of us Filipinos.
Meanwhile, can life go on for the better?
Or, will we be glued to the formal Impeachment Proceedings at the Senate?
The ‘End All’
Most importantly, can P-Noy debunk the claims made by former President GMA last Thursday, Jan. 12, 2012, at the Manila Hotel regarding the Economy?
Or, is he digging his own grave?
Can the Senate and the House do justice to Corona, Democracy and the Philippines?
Or are the 2013 Elections the end all and be all of this game?
There are 11 Senators who are running for reelection themselves or whose relatives are running in their place.
A vicious cycle
What electoral factor will count the most in influencing their votes at the end of the Trial?
Will the relative popularity of Impeachment and P-Noy as against the unpopularity of GMA and Corona count the most as Sen. Sonny Trillanes seems to be explaining his vote in advance?
Will Pork Barrel and other Administration bribes count as much with the Senators as they did with the Congressmen?
Will the presence of the Iglesia ni Kristo on Corona’s side weigh in?
Will the absence of Cardinal Sin’s successor, Archbishop Chito Tagle, and the Roman Catholic Church’s Hierarchy, the CBCP, on the side of P-Noy and Impeachment weigh at all?
Can the Mass Media and Public Opinion still perform their roles?
Or, are they both caught in a giant vicious circle?
Triple, double lose
The blind leading the blind! One mob leading another mob!
Many people believe that Corona is the one with the most to lose in this game.
Many believe that he is in a lose–lose situation. Yes, that may be very true.
However, the whole country may be in a lose–lose–lose situation.
Why the triple lose rather than just a double lose situation?
Three possible outcomes
As we explained in our column two weeks ago, there are three possible outcomes of a completed Impeachment process.
The first is an acquittal by the Majority – 12 or more votes.
The second is a conviction by 16 or more votes.
There is a more dangerous third option.
Twelve to 15 Senators vote for conviction – a simple majority of the Senate but not enough to satisfy the Constitution’s requirement of 16 votes.
However, P-Noy will accept nothing short of a Constitutional Conviction.
Because of his character flaws, he will concentrate on securing this.
Throughout the Trial, he will not be able to concentrate on other more important things.
He will remain focused on Corona with the jaws of a crocodile or hyena that has caught and bitten live game for their food.
Extraordinary economic woes
Meanwhile, the Economy will be allowed to linger.
Any extraordinary additional problem will throw it into a tailspin.
An Iranian blockade of the Straits of Hormuz will block a substantial portion of the world’s oil supply and send prices through the roof.
What contingency plans does P-Noy have for such an eventuality?
However, even if P-Noy gets what he wants out of Corona’s Impeachment Conviction, it does not assure us of political peace and economic growth.
What it will give us is an imbalanced democracy under the control of an imbalanced leader.
And if that imbalanced President does not get what he wants with Plan A, he will try his Plan B – a Palace Coup against Corona, the Senate Verdict and the Constitution!
Impeachment distraction
CONSUMERS' DEMAND!
Herman Tiu Laurel
1/23-29/2012
My latest estimate of the 4.6-million Meralco electricity consumers’ money being swiped by the power distributor yearly is anywhere from a low of P30 billion to a high of P50 billion.
This is being unjustly and immorally, but quasi-legally, siphoned off through distorted policies, cover-ups, and outright deception by Malacañang, the Legislature, the ERC (Energy Regulatory Commission), and Meralco in collusion with one another.
Some of the specific methods by which this massive swindle has been carried out are: 1) the ERC’s defiance of a 2003 Supreme Court (SC) decision affirming the validity of the 12% RoRB (Return on Rate Base) rate methodology by subverting it with a PBR (Performance Based Regulation) scheme that raised the private power company’s rate of return to a range of 15% to 17%; 2) the regulatory agency’s disregard of an SC-ordered CoA audit of Meralco finding (in test years 2003 and 2007) that the latter overcharged its customers by at least P14 billion; 3) the ERC’s approval of overstated Meralco capex (capital expenditure) claims of P41 billion that should only have been P1 billion, according to Mang Naro Lualhati, and 4) the overpricing of Meralco’s equipment by 500% upwards, used as the basis for its asset base claims.
Highest in Asia
The public could have very easily gotten to the bottom of the issues that consumer advocates and crusaders have long raised against Meralco and the ERC if the Legislature (the Senate and the Lower House) had only spent a serious day or two to ventilate these properly.
Even the more conservative business and labor groups, such as the PCCI (Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry) and TUCP (Trade Union Congress of the Philippines), have now joined the public clamor for Malacañang to act on this.
They have obviously done so because they are also feeling the debilitating impact of the “highest power cost in Asia,” which has become a brick wall that investors to the Philippines -- local and foreign -- have run against.
Yet, in spite of the clamor and the pressing need to address this, Malacañang and Congress have kept mum on the matter for 10 years.
Coronavela
The “impeachment trial” is described as a “circus,” a “Coronavela,” or a “big show.”
But should we care for shows in the midst of economic crises?
We couldn’t care less if Corona, who had never shown great deeds anyway (compared with Atty. Alan Paguia’s heroic sacrifice for challenging previous SC misdeeds), gets convicted.
There are grave problems in our energy sector that we care for with a rage, especially when Malacañang, Congress, and big media feign ignorance of the massive abuse and exploitation committed by the electricity regulator and its “liaison” that’s so damaging to the economy.
We care with great anger when they do not grant a full hearing for consumers’ power price crisis pleas.
Palace’s sense of proportion
What inane sense of proportion does Malacañang and Congress have when the show trial gets thousands of government and media man hours, and half of the Senate’s time, over an alleged Corona ill-gotten wealth of over P50 million while they all turn a deaf ear to an annual electricity price plunder of P30 billion to P50 billion?
Some quarters so taken by the impeachment passion play badger us to take sides between BS Aquino III and perceived Gloria Arroyo mole Corona; but I tell them, “Why should you make me choose between the black kettle and the black pot?”
Or, to put it in a much less savory Filipino street quip, someone in support of my position asked, “Bakit mo kami ipagpipili sa tae at ipot?” (Why compel us to choose between shit and bird droppings?”)
To that I added, “The black kettle in Malacañang is now more dangerous than the black pot in jail, along with her cohorts.”
We should all be reminded of the old adage, “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Evidence of overprice
If the regime today succeeds in instilling terror in the SC and other government institutions, allowing it to appoint only its own justices and other loyalists to power, then God save this nation again.
Already, we can see the arrogance emanating from the denizens of the shadows of the new Malacañang and its instrumentalities, such as the Liberal Party, the Samar Group, the CCT operators, ad nausea.
Last Jan. 16, at 2 p.m., the start of the Corona impeachment trial was also the same day and time that a significant ERC hearing was held on the “Application for Approval of Maximum Average Price (MAP) for 2012… (and the) Translation of the MAP… into a Distribution Rate Structure for Meralco’s Various Customer Classes.”
But the ERC is hearing these issues without first settling prejudicial questions raised by consumer advocates, namely: 1) consumer advocate Mang Naro Lualhati’s motion for reconsideration on the ERC approval of Meralco’s capital expense claim, upon which the latter’s MAP of P1.60/kWh is based on an overstated asset base, as shown by earlier CoA findings, which rate should only be P0.90/kWh; 2) Jojo Borja’s petition for a TRO on the ERC hearing pending resolution of his protest against the agency’s disregard of his evidence of the overprice in Meralco’s poles, transformers, and substations by over 500%, and 3) Butch Junia’s exposé of a P550 million per year “regulatory liaison” budget by Meralco for the ERC.
Use enemy’s strength
In protest of the proceedings despite the unresolved prejudicial questions and pending Court of Appeals issuances, Borja and Junia staged a walkout.
Lualhati, however, stayed on to argue for the same, i.e. for the ERC to hold in abeyance any further deliberations on the Meralco distribution rates until the prejudicial issues are settled.
Thankfully, he succeeded in limiting the hearing to simply a hearing of facts without any action.
Although I missed that hearing to join our cable TV coverage of the Senate impeachment trial, I used that forum to inform the public about the said ERC hearing and the issues thereat, as part of my guerrilla tactic to get the electricity issue into national focus.
As Sun Tzu advised, “use the enemy’s strength against him.”
In this case, we are highlighting the fight against electricity abuse by the ERC and Meralco, through a discussion of Malacañang’s “show trial,” a zarzuela that is intended to distract from the issues that the public needs to focus on.
(Tune in to 1098AM, DWAD, Sulo ng Pilipino/Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m.; watch Destiny Cable GNN’s HTL edition of Talk News TV, Saturdays, 8:15 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11:15 p.m., on “Hocus PCOS used two software;” visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
Herman Tiu Laurel
1/23-29/2012
My latest estimate of the 4.6-million Meralco electricity consumers’ money being swiped by the power distributor yearly is anywhere from a low of P30 billion to a high of P50 billion.
This is being unjustly and immorally, but quasi-legally, siphoned off through distorted policies, cover-ups, and outright deception by Malacañang, the Legislature, the ERC (Energy Regulatory Commission), and Meralco in collusion with one another.
Some of the specific methods by which this massive swindle has been carried out are: 1) the ERC’s defiance of a 2003 Supreme Court (SC) decision affirming the validity of the 12% RoRB (Return on Rate Base) rate methodology by subverting it with a PBR (Performance Based Regulation) scheme that raised the private power company’s rate of return to a range of 15% to 17%; 2) the regulatory agency’s disregard of an SC-ordered CoA audit of Meralco finding (in test years 2003 and 2007) that the latter overcharged its customers by at least P14 billion; 3) the ERC’s approval of overstated Meralco capex (capital expenditure) claims of P41 billion that should only have been P1 billion, according to Mang Naro Lualhati, and 4) the overpricing of Meralco’s equipment by 500% upwards, used as the basis for its asset base claims.
Highest in Asia
The public could have very easily gotten to the bottom of the issues that consumer advocates and crusaders have long raised against Meralco and the ERC if the Legislature (the Senate and the Lower House) had only spent a serious day or two to ventilate these properly.
Even the more conservative business and labor groups, such as the PCCI (Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry) and TUCP (Trade Union Congress of the Philippines), have now joined the public clamor for Malacañang to act on this.
They have obviously done so because they are also feeling the debilitating impact of the “highest power cost in Asia,” which has become a brick wall that investors to the Philippines -- local and foreign -- have run against.
Yet, in spite of the clamor and the pressing need to address this, Malacañang and Congress have kept mum on the matter for 10 years.
Coronavela
The “impeachment trial” is described as a “circus,” a “Coronavela,” or a “big show.”
But should we care for shows in the midst of economic crises?
We couldn’t care less if Corona, who had never shown great deeds anyway (compared with Atty. Alan Paguia’s heroic sacrifice for challenging previous SC misdeeds), gets convicted.
There are grave problems in our energy sector that we care for with a rage, especially when Malacañang, Congress, and big media feign ignorance of the massive abuse and exploitation committed by the electricity regulator and its “liaison” that’s so damaging to the economy.
We care with great anger when they do not grant a full hearing for consumers’ power price crisis pleas.
Palace’s sense of proportion
What inane sense of proportion does Malacañang and Congress have when the show trial gets thousands of government and media man hours, and half of the Senate’s time, over an alleged Corona ill-gotten wealth of over P50 million while they all turn a deaf ear to an annual electricity price plunder of P30 billion to P50 billion?
Some quarters so taken by the impeachment passion play badger us to take sides between BS Aquino III and perceived Gloria Arroyo mole Corona; but I tell them, “Why should you make me choose between the black kettle and the black pot?”
Or, to put it in a much less savory Filipino street quip, someone in support of my position asked, “Bakit mo kami ipagpipili sa tae at ipot?” (Why compel us to choose between shit and bird droppings?”)
To that I added, “The black kettle in Malacañang is now more dangerous than the black pot in jail, along with her cohorts.”
We should all be reminded of the old adage, “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Evidence of overprice
If the regime today succeeds in instilling terror in the SC and other government institutions, allowing it to appoint only its own justices and other loyalists to power, then God save this nation again.
Already, we can see the arrogance emanating from the denizens of the shadows of the new Malacañang and its instrumentalities, such as the Liberal Party, the Samar Group, the CCT operators, ad nausea.
Last Jan. 16, at 2 p.m., the start of the Corona impeachment trial was also the same day and time that a significant ERC hearing was held on the “Application for Approval of Maximum Average Price (MAP) for 2012… (and the) Translation of the MAP… into a Distribution Rate Structure for Meralco’s Various Customer Classes.”
But the ERC is hearing these issues without first settling prejudicial questions raised by consumer advocates, namely: 1) consumer advocate Mang Naro Lualhati’s motion for reconsideration on the ERC approval of Meralco’s capital expense claim, upon which the latter’s MAP of P1.60/kWh is based on an overstated asset base, as shown by earlier CoA findings, which rate should only be P0.90/kWh; 2) Jojo Borja’s petition for a TRO on the ERC hearing pending resolution of his protest against the agency’s disregard of his evidence of the overprice in Meralco’s poles, transformers, and substations by over 500%, and 3) Butch Junia’s exposé of a P550 million per year “regulatory liaison” budget by Meralco for the ERC.
Use enemy’s strength
In protest of the proceedings despite the unresolved prejudicial questions and pending Court of Appeals issuances, Borja and Junia staged a walkout.
Lualhati, however, stayed on to argue for the same, i.e. for the ERC to hold in abeyance any further deliberations on the Meralco distribution rates until the prejudicial issues are settled.
Thankfully, he succeeded in limiting the hearing to simply a hearing of facts without any action.
Although I missed that hearing to join our cable TV coverage of the Senate impeachment trial, I used that forum to inform the public about the said ERC hearing and the issues thereat, as part of my guerrilla tactic to get the electricity issue into national focus.
As Sun Tzu advised, “use the enemy’s strength against him.”
In this case, we are highlighting the fight against electricity abuse by the ERC and Meralco, through a discussion of Malacañang’s “show trial,” a zarzuela that is intended to distract from the issues that the public needs to focus on.
(Tune in to 1098AM, DWAD, Sulo ng Pilipino/Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m.; watch Destiny Cable GNN’s HTL edition of Talk News TV, Saturdays, 8:15 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11:15 p.m., on “Hocus PCOS used two software;” visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
Monday, January 23, 2012
On oil, on all: BSA III useless
DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
1/23/2012
Last Wednesday, Jan. 18, newspapers reported Energy Secretary Jose Rene Almendras as saying that government “cannot control” and has “no right to dictate oil prices because that would be tantamount to regulation,” which he argues is “against the law.”
If that were true, then why do we have an energy department at all? The oil companies can have absolute rein on the market, and we can remove all the playacting that government is still there to keep them in check.
The reality is, a Department of Energy (DoE) does exist. It is supposed to be implementing what Almendras mouths as “the law,” which, in plain English, is simply regulation. Government is supposed to regulate by putting up protective measures to help Filipino families and the nation’s economy from suffering economic collapse.
However, Almendras is doing the opposite. By championing deregulation, he wants to ensure that our people continue to remain defenseless against the predatory pricing and market manipulation of transnational oil corporations in cahoots with the local oligarchs.
What is the “market” that Almendras invokes? You will find a thousand ways of defining it, such as from Economy Watch, which says, “a market is an environment that allows buyers and sellers to trade or exchange goods, services and information. These interactions define demand and supply characteristics;” or from Wikipedia, which defines it as “one of many varieties of systems, institutions, procedures, social relations and infrastructures whereby parties engage in exchange.”
Is this like my baker preparing pan de sal that I later buy — end of story? If it were that simple, then there should have been no market chaos in the “deregulated” world economy of the past 20 years that was brought in by the US-UN-promoted free trade and globalization.
If “deregulation” were that great, then why is it that the “regulated” economy of China, with its controlled yuan and state-led system, is doing better than all the rest?
Moreover, is the oil sector of China deregulated? For that matter, is the US oil sector really deregulated? These two countries maintain secret oil stockpiles that extend far into the future to ensure their fuel security.
On June 24, 2011, it was reported in US media that the “US releases oil from stockpiles to aid economy,” spurred by the “Obama administration’s decision… to release 30 million barrels of oil from… emergency stockpiles… designed to bolster the economy and soothe consumers’ concerns amid political unrest in Libya and the Middle East… (which) move coincided with a similar 30 million-barrel release by other International Energy Agency (IEA) member countries… (sending) oil prices to a four-month low in trading…”
Is this an action that characterizes regulation or deregulation? What is clear is that the US government and the IEA do intervene to “bolster the economy… soothe consumers’ concerns… (and send) oil prices to a four-month low…” Now, isn’t that regulation?
Free market apologists will argue that “intervention” is not “regulation;” but intervention is certainly not “deregulation,” at least in the sense that Almendras uses it — that is, never to touch the free market play of oil.
This certainly brings us back to the proposal I have put forward for years now, which is for the Philippines to have a 12-month oil or fuel stockpile bought with excess foreign exchange in the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) and some in US bonds in the US Treasury, or part of the Special Deposit Account sleeping in the BSP vaults. A solon or two had echoed this same idea; but they were immediately rebuked by Platts oil consultancy, whose “expert,” ironically named Montespeque opined that stockpiling would only raise oil prices and hurt the Philippines.
And so we ask: Are China and the US hurting themselves by stockpiling oil? Wasn’t that June 24, 2011 release by Obama and the IEA of some of this stockpile timed to send “oil prices to a four-month low?”
There are very many forces that actually intervene in the “deregulated” oil market, influencing and turning it to their advantage. Commodities traders buy, sell and resell oil futures while big traders consciously and deliberately influence market prices through their bet placements, pushing up oil prices in cahoots with other players (e.g., global media giants and politicians of the major powers, who create events for the benefit of their finance and oil principals — the major contributors to their political campaigns).
Imagine sheep herders and sheep dogs with tags on them, like “oil giants,” “market speculators,” “oil traders,” “business media wires,” “business cable news,” “US president,” “Israel,” acting in unison, herding the sheep (aka the market) this and that way.
Since late last year up to now, the oil market has been attributing its volatility to the US-Israel vs Iran et al. scenario. Yet there was nary a note from BSA III and Almendras in all that time save for their sudden announcement of ”rationing” oil once a crisis erupts. Aside from this, the Palace has only one other measure, the “Pantawid Pasada,” which one newspaper headlined, “Pantawid Pasada card is free — DoE.”
Well, the measly P300 may be free for the drivers who receive it but it should be made clear that government is budgeting and paying the oil companies for the oil that drivers draw from the cards. It is therefore really not a subsidy for public utility vehicle (PUV) drivers but for the oil companies. And if government cuts the excise tax allegedly to help the public, that is still no help at all as it cuts government revenues, which will then have to be raised somewhere else. It is only the oil companies that win in every one of these scenarios.
BS Aquino III, Almendras, and the DoE are all useless and inutile. They are actually the greatest obstacle to reestablishing a people and economy-friendly oil sector, as well as a regime of people-oriented re-regulation that seeks to dismantle an oligarch-enriching “deregulated regulation.”
(Tune in to 1098AM, dwAD, Sulo ng Pilipino/Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m.; watch Destiny Cable GNN’s HTL edition of Talk News TV, Saturdays, 8:15 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11:15 p.m., on “Hocus PCOS used two software;” visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
Herman Tiu Laurel
1/23/2012
Last Wednesday, Jan. 18, newspapers reported Energy Secretary Jose Rene Almendras as saying that government “cannot control” and has “no right to dictate oil prices because that would be tantamount to regulation,” which he argues is “against the law.”
If that were true, then why do we have an energy department at all? The oil companies can have absolute rein on the market, and we can remove all the playacting that government is still there to keep them in check.
The reality is, a Department of Energy (DoE) does exist. It is supposed to be implementing what Almendras mouths as “the law,” which, in plain English, is simply regulation. Government is supposed to regulate by putting up protective measures to help Filipino families and the nation’s economy from suffering economic collapse.
However, Almendras is doing the opposite. By championing deregulation, he wants to ensure that our people continue to remain defenseless against the predatory pricing and market manipulation of transnational oil corporations in cahoots with the local oligarchs.
What is the “market” that Almendras invokes? You will find a thousand ways of defining it, such as from Economy Watch, which says, “a market is an environment that allows buyers and sellers to trade or exchange goods, services and information. These interactions define demand and supply characteristics;” or from Wikipedia, which defines it as “one of many varieties of systems, institutions, procedures, social relations and infrastructures whereby parties engage in exchange.”
Is this like my baker preparing pan de sal that I later buy — end of story? If it were that simple, then there should have been no market chaos in the “deregulated” world economy of the past 20 years that was brought in by the US-UN-promoted free trade and globalization.
If “deregulation” were that great, then why is it that the “regulated” economy of China, with its controlled yuan and state-led system, is doing better than all the rest?
Moreover, is the oil sector of China deregulated? For that matter, is the US oil sector really deregulated? These two countries maintain secret oil stockpiles that extend far into the future to ensure their fuel security.
On June 24, 2011, it was reported in US media that the “US releases oil from stockpiles to aid economy,” spurred by the “Obama administration’s decision… to release 30 million barrels of oil from… emergency stockpiles… designed to bolster the economy and soothe consumers’ concerns amid political unrest in Libya and the Middle East… (which) move coincided with a similar 30 million-barrel release by other International Energy Agency (IEA) member countries… (sending) oil prices to a four-month low in trading…”
Is this an action that characterizes regulation or deregulation? What is clear is that the US government and the IEA do intervene to “bolster the economy… soothe consumers’ concerns… (and send) oil prices to a four-month low…” Now, isn’t that regulation?
Free market apologists will argue that “intervention” is not “regulation;” but intervention is certainly not “deregulation,” at least in the sense that Almendras uses it — that is, never to touch the free market play of oil.
This certainly brings us back to the proposal I have put forward for years now, which is for the Philippines to have a 12-month oil or fuel stockpile bought with excess foreign exchange in the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) and some in US bonds in the US Treasury, or part of the Special Deposit Account sleeping in the BSP vaults. A solon or two had echoed this same idea; but they were immediately rebuked by Platts oil consultancy, whose “expert,” ironically named Montespeque opined that stockpiling would only raise oil prices and hurt the Philippines.
And so we ask: Are China and the US hurting themselves by stockpiling oil? Wasn’t that June 24, 2011 release by Obama and the IEA of some of this stockpile timed to send “oil prices to a four-month low?”
There are very many forces that actually intervene in the “deregulated” oil market, influencing and turning it to their advantage. Commodities traders buy, sell and resell oil futures while big traders consciously and deliberately influence market prices through their bet placements, pushing up oil prices in cahoots with other players (e.g., global media giants and politicians of the major powers, who create events for the benefit of their finance and oil principals — the major contributors to their political campaigns).
Imagine sheep herders and sheep dogs with tags on them, like “oil giants,” “market speculators,” “oil traders,” “business media wires,” “business cable news,” “US president,” “Israel,” acting in unison, herding the sheep (aka the market) this and that way.
Since late last year up to now, the oil market has been attributing its volatility to the US-Israel vs Iran et al. scenario. Yet there was nary a note from BSA III and Almendras in all that time save for their sudden announcement of ”rationing” oil once a crisis erupts. Aside from this, the Palace has only one other measure, the “Pantawid Pasada,” which one newspaper headlined, “Pantawid Pasada card is free — DoE.”
Well, the measly P300 may be free for the drivers who receive it but it should be made clear that government is budgeting and paying the oil companies for the oil that drivers draw from the cards. It is therefore really not a subsidy for public utility vehicle (PUV) drivers but for the oil companies. And if government cuts the excise tax allegedly to help the public, that is still no help at all as it cuts government revenues, which will then have to be raised somewhere else. It is only the oil companies that win in every one of these scenarios.
BS Aquino III, Almendras, and the DoE are all useless and inutile. They are actually the greatest obstacle to reestablishing a people and economy-friendly oil sector, as well as a regime of people-oriented re-regulation that seeks to dismantle an oligarch-enriching “deregulated regulation.”
(Tune in to 1098AM, dwAD, Sulo ng Pilipino/Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m.; watch Destiny Cable GNN’s HTL edition of Talk News TV, Saturdays, 8:15 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11:15 p.m., on “Hocus PCOS used two software;” visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Standing above the law
BACKBENCHER
Rod P. Kapunan
1/21-22/2012
Most of us believe Chief Justice Renato Corona is being tried principally for his alleged failure to disclose his Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth (SALN). Although that now appears moot for the fact that Supreme Court clerk of court Enriqueta Vidal was compelled to surrender those documents under pain of contempt, to the more discerning, that opened the Pandora’s Box on the wealth of those secretive justices. Her submission to the majesty of the Senate impeachment court, viz. to disregard the high court’s resolution, is not so much that the public now knows the value of Corona’s property. Rather, it is that the institution we know as our final refuge to redress the wrongs inflicted on us stand as violators of the law with those dour-faced men in robe claiming to be above the law.
To recall, the origin of why the yearly submission of SALN was made compulsory was by virtue of the passage of Republic Act 6717, otherwise known as the Code of Conduct and Ethical Standards for Public Officials and Employees. The author and leading exponent of that bill was then-Senator Rene Saguisag, no doubt, was goaded to enact it, for like the rest of us, he was intoxicated by the euphoria of the Edsa People Power and wanted to impose moral regeneration in our society.
The ousted Marcos regime was banefully classified as a government of “kleptocracy”, and all that his family owned, like those properties they inherited, acquired before marriage, including those that were acquired before Ferdinand entered public service were given their generic classification as “ill-gotten.”
All wanted to scrub-clean the government and its employees, and the novel idea of Saguisag fit into their self-righteous crusade. The hypocrites thought they could monitor the progressive accumulation of wealth of all public servants. It was laudable because Cory Aquino thought that Sasuisag’s bill would serve to plug the loophole of corruption in public service. So, every lowly public servant was made to comply under pain of being dismissed from the service or accused of unexplained wealth.
But unknown to most of us, the Supreme Court that we look upon with reverential awe for its enlightening interpretation of our laws, silently passed a resolution in 1989, or right after Saguisag’s pet bill was enacted, ordering its personnel that all SALN submitted by the justices are off-limits to public scrutiny. The justices were unmindful their resolution carried an implication of exempting their SALN as public document that could be demanded by any taxpayer as a matter of right.
So, beginning with the late Chief Justice Marcelo Fernan, that self-serving resolution was successively reiterated by Andres Narvasa, Hilario Davide, Jr., Artemio Panganiban and Reynato Puno. Embattled Chief Justice Corona could no longer reaffirm that for that could be used as added point against him.
We are not saying the Supreme Court does not have any inherent power to pass resolutions to enjoin its personnel to obey its rules and observe confidentiality on the status of pending cases before it. However, ordinary observers interpret that power as mainly intended for internal consumption, but not for it to carry out judicial legislation that would negate laws of general application. To agree to that supposition is to extend to the high court a questionable power to judicially legislate matters designed to deflect laws inimical to their interest.
Of course, the resolution stands as immoral and questionable, but not unconstitutional or illegal. Who will judge that now? Rather, it brought embarrassment to our system that openly adheres to transparency and to the principle of equality before the law. Surely, nobody from among our taxpayers would like the idea of seeing the interpreters of our laws seeking to exempt themselves, not for the flimsy reason they are “honorable”, for on the contrary they should be the ones to set the moral guidance to our people.
The implication goes beyond that bedeviling view of seeing them standing above the law, but on how the public could objectively judge them on the basis of what they declared. For that they forfeited whatever moral ascendancy they had to punish any man facing litigation before it for unexplained wealth. That also placed the Bureau of Internal Revenue in a dilemma. While justices may unavoidably pay their income tax, the BIR cannot make a disclosure on how much they paid by virtue of that questionable judicial limitation.
The issue of SALN reminds us of that pathetic Supreme Court decision that instead of convicting the accused, who stood as owner of an alleged ill-gotten wealth, it proceeded to convict his money. I am referring to the $687 million escrow deposit made by the Swiss government at the Philippine National Bank, a condition set by the Swiss court that said amount could only be released upon declaration of guilt by our local court in a criminal case against the Marcoses. The Supreme Court managed to garnish said deposit on July 15, 2003 in favor of the Arroyo government without declaring the Marcoses guilty of any criminal offense.
The unusual thing about that out-of-this-world decision, the magistrates proceeded to hear the case by summary judgment. For that they managed to do away with the tedious process of summoning the witnesses, and possibly prevent anybody from contesting the proceedings. In addition, the presidential good-for-nothing commission came out with a simpleton’s formula that since the amount was way beyond the income of the late President, presto, said deposit was ill-gotten, and all that was required was a summary proceedings to come out with an ex party judgment.
They likewise thought it as “logical” that a dead man has no right to defend himself, or can he testify and confront the witnesses against him. So, instead of dismissing the case, they went ahead to convict his money. It was on that basis why the political hijacker, or the government that appointed Corona to his thrown was able to garnish the deposit. Rep. Imelda Marcos believes part of the “convicted money” was used in the now celebrated “Joc Joc Bolante Fertilizer Scam.”
The decision steered much confusion with many thinking whether those magistrates were some kind of nuts. We are saying this because by any stretch of one’s imagination, one can never convict a thing, but that is exactly what they did. One can charge, try and convict a living person, which reason why courts automatically dismiss criminal cases upon being informed the accused has died. Dismissal is peremptory because there is no use convicting a dead man. Cadavers can never be sent to jail! For that, we now stand as the only country in the world that managed to convict an inanimate object, something that could never be matched by any civilized court even by ions of centuries to come.
Right now we are seeing the reality of a badly deteriorated ethical conduct of most justices and judges, and maybe the self-serving prohibition to keep confidential their SALN is one reason that caused the erosion of faith by our people in our judicial system.
(rodkap@yahoo.com.ph)
Rod P. Kapunan
1/21-22/2012
Most of us believe Chief Justice Renato Corona is being tried principally for his alleged failure to disclose his Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth (SALN). Although that now appears moot for the fact that Supreme Court clerk of court Enriqueta Vidal was compelled to surrender those documents under pain of contempt, to the more discerning, that opened the Pandora’s Box on the wealth of those secretive justices. Her submission to the majesty of the Senate impeachment court, viz. to disregard the high court’s resolution, is not so much that the public now knows the value of Corona’s property. Rather, it is that the institution we know as our final refuge to redress the wrongs inflicted on us stand as violators of the law with those dour-faced men in robe claiming to be above the law.
To recall, the origin of why the yearly submission of SALN was made compulsory was by virtue of the passage of Republic Act 6717, otherwise known as the Code of Conduct and Ethical Standards for Public Officials and Employees. The author and leading exponent of that bill was then-Senator Rene Saguisag, no doubt, was goaded to enact it, for like the rest of us, he was intoxicated by the euphoria of the Edsa People Power and wanted to impose moral regeneration in our society.
The ousted Marcos regime was banefully classified as a government of “kleptocracy”, and all that his family owned, like those properties they inherited, acquired before marriage, including those that were acquired before Ferdinand entered public service were given their generic classification as “ill-gotten.”
All wanted to scrub-clean the government and its employees, and the novel idea of Saguisag fit into their self-righteous crusade. The hypocrites thought they could monitor the progressive accumulation of wealth of all public servants. It was laudable because Cory Aquino thought that Sasuisag’s bill would serve to plug the loophole of corruption in public service. So, every lowly public servant was made to comply under pain of being dismissed from the service or accused of unexplained wealth.
But unknown to most of us, the Supreme Court that we look upon with reverential awe for its enlightening interpretation of our laws, silently passed a resolution in 1989, or right after Saguisag’s pet bill was enacted, ordering its personnel that all SALN submitted by the justices are off-limits to public scrutiny. The justices were unmindful their resolution carried an implication of exempting their SALN as public document that could be demanded by any taxpayer as a matter of right.
So, beginning with the late Chief Justice Marcelo Fernan, that self-serving resolution was successively reiterated by Andres Narvasa, Hilario Davide, Jr., Artemio Panganiban and Reynato Puno. Embattled Chief Justice Corona could no longer reaffirm that for that could be used as added point against him.
We are not saying the Supreme Court does not have any inherent power to pass resolutions to enjoin its personnel to obey its rules and observe confidentiality on the status of pending cases before it. However, ordinary observers interpret that power as mainly intended for internal consumption, but not for it to carry out judicial legislation that would negate laws of general application. To agree to that supposition is to extend to the high court a questionable power to judicially legislate matters designed to deflect laws inimical to their interest.
Of course, the resolution stands as immoral and questionable, but not unconstitutional or illegal. Who will judge that now? Rather, it brought embarrassment to our system that openly adheres to transparency and to the principle of equality before the law. Surely, nobody from among our taxpayers would like the idea of seeing the interpreters of our laws seeking to exempt themselves, not for the flimsy reason they are “honorable”, for on the contrary they should be the ones to set the moral guidance to our people.
The implication goes beyond that bedeviling view of seeing them standing above the law, but on how the public could objectively judge them on the basis of what they declared. For that they forfeited whatever moral ascendancy they had to punish any man facing litigation before it for unexplained wealth. That also placed the Bureau of Internal Revenue in a dilemma. While justices may unavoidably pay their income tax, the BIR cannot make a disclosure on how much they paid by virtue of that questionable judicial limitation.
The issue of SALN reminds us of that pathetic Supreme Court decision that instead of convicting the accused, who stood as owner of an alleged ill-gotten wealth, it proceeded to convict his money. I am referring to the $687 million escrow deposit made by the Swiss government at the Philippine National Bank, a condition set by the Swiss court that said amount could only be released upon declaration of guilt by our local court in a criminal case against the Marcoses. The Supreme Court managed to garnish said deposit on July 15, 2003 in favor of the Arroyo government without declaring the Marcoses guilty of any criminal offense.
The unusual thing about that out-of-this-world decision, the magistrates proceeded to hear the case by summary judgment. For that they managed to do away with the tedious process of summoning the witnesses, and possibly prevent anybody from contesting the proceedings. In addition, the presidential good-for-nothing commission came out with a simpleton’s formula that since the amount was way beyond the income of the late President, presto, said deposit was ill-gotten, and all that was required was a summary proceedings to come out with an ex party judgment.
They likewise thought it as “logical” that a dead man has no right to defend himself, or can he testify and confront the witnesses against him. So, instead of dismissing the case, they went ahead to convict his money. It was on that basis why the political hijacker, or the government that appointed Corona to his thrown was able to garnish the deposit. Rep. Imelda Marcos believes part of the “convicted money” was used in the now celebrated “Joc Joc Bolante Fertilizer Scam.”
The decision steered much confusion with many thinking whether those magistrates were some kind of nuts. We are saying this because by any stretch of one’s imagination, one can never convict a thing, but that is exactly what they did. One can charge, try and convict a living person, which reason why courts automatically dismiss criminal cases upon being informed the accused has died. Dismissal is peremptory because there is no use convicting a dead man. Cadavers can never be sent to jail! For that, we now stand as the only country in the world that managed to convict an inanimate object, something that could never be matched by any civilized court even by ions of centuries to come.
Right now we are seeing the reality of a badly deteriorated ethical conduct of most justices and judges, and maybe the self-serving prohibition to keep confidential their SALN is one reason that caused the erosion of faith by our people in our judicial system.
(rodkap@yahoo.com.ph)
Consumer-taxpayers should revolt
CONSUMERS' DEMAND!
Herman Tiu Laurel
1/16-22/2012
Do you wonder why the call for higher and newer taxes of all forms is forever being raised by the government, the BSP, the IMF, WB and ADB, even as government service institutions are declining in number due to privatization?
While new taxes and higher tax goals are instituted at the same time public services such as power, water, road infrastructure among many other privatized public utilities raise their rates without end even as these companies continue to report ever increasing profits year-after-year.
Just the same, public infrastructure projects are supposedly being jointly funded in the BS Aquino III flagship PPP (public-private partnership) scheme.
Hence, government funding requirements should not be as significant as it would be if government had to go it alone, right?
Yet, BS Aquino III is still requiring greater and greater collections from the revenue raising agencies.
Why more taxes?
New tax impositions that all of us, at one time, raise our arms up against eventually come to be accepted as part of life, like the VAT on the Expressways toll which is still unjustified despite the reality that we have to live with it.
The increase on “sin taxes” slated this year, which proponents justify by invoking health concerns, even when they are just obfuscating what is simply an unjustified additional burden.
Last January 3, Malacañang said in a regular press conference that “new taxes still ‘last resort’” but only betrays the government’s continuing intention to raise collection in the face of the question we posed above. Why more taxes, even from so called “improved collection”, which really means forcing businesses to shell out more under-the-table for the BIR and Customs to “mediate” any final amount, when the taxpayer is not getting its worth from the existing taxes being extracted and even less from additional tax burdens?
Run after professionals, self-employed
The last columns in this space for 2011 focused on the essentials issues, including the incontrovertible fact that the Philippines now has sufficient internal financial resources to bankroll its public and private investment needs.
We have to drill this into our readers’ memory that the Philippines GIR (gross international reserves) is now $ 76-B and growing against the $ 62.5-B foreign debt of the country.
We cited Vice President Binay’s reiteration of this position which we have crusaded on for the past year.
In a speech before the PCCI, Binay called for the country to use its GIR for public and private investment requirements.
Yet, the government wants to squeeze more out of our countrymen, with Malacañang and the BIR stressing that it will now run after “self-employed and professionals – tagged as a major source of tax leaks - to help hit its P1.066-trillion goal” collection in 2011.
Averse to real hard work
Aside from the surplus GIR the Philippines holds in its coffers, there is also the SDA (special deposit account) held by the BSP with at least P1.7 trillion in deposits, paying out 4% interest.
Local bankers have urged the BSP to release it by reducing the interest it pays to keep this from circulating.
A mere reduction of interest paid on it by 1% would spur the depositors, like the local banks, to withdraw the funds to seek financial investments that would allow it to earn more.
The bankers want the BSP to bear the burden of the decision and evade the responsibility of making a patriotic decision to help the national economy by seeking worthwhile productive physical investments to fund, like agricultural projects or factories.
But the banks are averse to real hard work.
They are borrowing and borrowing
Much of the deposits are from the conversion of remittance dollars to peso parked in the BSP, which the BSP uses as a mere tool to control and balance money supply and credit instead of spurring real growth.
Despite the existence of this huge reservoir of funds, the BSP continues to harp on the greatness of its performance as measured by the “credit ratings” upgrade by Fitch’s, Moody’s or Standard and Poor’s--despite the fact that these ratings agencies have been discredited the world over for being tools of manipulation by the global finance mafia.
In the case of the Philippines, this mafia wants to keep us borrowing and borrowing without end, with the BSP officials such as Tetangco and Guinigundo in cahoots.
A hole in the head
Last Jan. 3, the headline, “Lenders swarm Philippine’s first global bond issue” appeared, making it like it was Christmas again from the financial Santa Claus in time for the Three Kings’ Feast.
“The oversubscription came within hours of the announcement by the Bureau of Treasury that it would raise between $500 million and $1.5 billion in what would be the first sovereign dollar-denominated bond sale for the year.
“Tapped to jointly coordinate the bond float were Deutsche Bank and Standard Chartered Bank.
“They were also mandated as joint book runners, along with Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, JP Morgan and UBS.”
My oh my, they make it sound so great, except that we need this gift like a hole in the head, with the only true beneficiaries , the financial brokers and the bankers.
Making them richer and richer
The Philippines is already in a perfect position to do what Brazil did in 2005, which paid all its $15-billion debt while telling the IMF to go to hell. Argentina did the same after defaulting and negotiating a 70%-write-off. Today, it is one of the most dynamic economies in Latin America, growing between 8 to 9% per annum.
Our title for this week’s piece is “Consumers/taxpayers should revolt” because the continuing additional public utility rate hikes and tax increases are absolutely useless to those paying them.
The money extracted goes only to making the financial oligarchy richer and richer while the real, physical economy gets dried up even more. It’s time to revolt for real!
(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; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
Herman Tiu Laurel
1/16-22/2012
Do you wonder why the call for higher and newer taxes of all forms is forever being raised by the government, the BSP, the IMF, WB and ADB, even as government service institutions are declining in number due to privatization?
While new taxes and higher tax goals are instituted at the same time public services such as power, water, road infrastructure among many other privatized public utilities raise their rates without end even as these companies continue to report ever increasing profits year-after-year.
Just the same, public infrastructure projects are supposedly being jointly funded in the BS Aquino III flagship PPP (public-private partnership) scheme.
Hence, government funding requirements should not be as significant as it would be if government had to go it alone, right?
Yet, BS Aquino III is still requiring greater and greater collections from the revenue raising agencies.
Why more taxes?
New tax impositions that all of us, at one time, raise our arms up against eventually come to be accepted as part of life, like the VAT on the Expressways toll which is still unjustified despite the reality that we have to live with it.
The increase on “sin taxes” slated this year, which proponents justify by invoking health concerns, even when they are just obfuscating what is simply an unjustified additional burden.
Last January 3, Malacañang said in a regular press conference that “new taxes still ‘last resort’” but only betrays the government’s continuing intention to raise collection in the face of the question we posed above. Why more taxes, even from so called “improved collection”, which really means forcing businesses to shell out more under-the-table for the BIR and Customs to “mediate” any final amount, when the taxpayer is not getting its worth from the existing taxes being extracted and even less from additional tax burdens?
Run after professionals, self-employed
The last columns in this space for 2011 focused on the essentials issues, including the incontrovertible fact that the Philippines now has sufficient internal financial resources to bankroll its public and private investment needs.
We have to drill this into our readers’ memory that the Philippines GIR (gross international reserves) is now $ 76-B and growing against the $ 62.5-B foreign debt of the country.
We cited Vice President Binay’s reiteration of this position which we have crusaded on for the past year.
In a speech before the PCCI, Binay called for the country to use its GIR for public and private investment requirements.
Yet, the government wants to squeeze more out of our countrymen, with Malacañang and the BIR stressing that it will now run after “self-employed and professionals – tagged as a major source of tax leaks - to help hit its P1.066-trillion goal” collection in 2011.
Averse to real hard work
Aside from the surplus GIR the Philippines holds in its coffers, there is also the SDA (special deposit account) held by the BSP with at least P1.7 trillion in deposits, paying out 4% interest.
Local bankers have urged the BSP to release it by reducing the interest it pays to keep this from circulating.
A mere reduction of interest paid on it by 1% would spur the depositors, like the local banks, to withdraw the funds to seek financial investments that would allow it to earn more.
The bankers want the BSP to bear the burden of the decision and evade the responsibility of making a patriotic decision to help the national economy by seeking worthwhile productive physical investments to fund, like agricultural projects or factories.
But the banks are averse to real hard work.
They are borrowing and borrowing
Much of the deposits are from the conversion of remittance dollars to peso parked in the BSP, which the BSP uses as a mere tool to control and balance money supply and credit instead of spurring real growth.
Despite the existence of this huge reservoir of funds, the BSP continues to harp on the greatness of its performance as measured by the “credit ratings” upgrade by Fitch’s, Moody’s or Standard and Poor’s--despite the fact that these ratings agencies have been discredited the world over for being tools of manipulation by the global finance mafia.
In the case of the Philippines, this mafia wants to keep us borrowing and borrowing without end, with the BSP officials such as Tetangco and Guinigundo in cahoots.
A hole in the head
Last Jan. 3, the headline, “Lenders swarm Philippine’s first global bond issue” appeared, making it like it was Christmas again from the financial Santa Claus in time for the Three Kings’ Feast.
“The oversubscription came within hours of the announcement by the Bureau of Treasury that it would raise between $500 million and $1.5 billion in what would be the first sovereign dollar-denominated bond sale for the year.
“Tapped to jointly coordinate the bond float were Deutsche Bank and Standard Chartered Bank.
“They were also mandated as joint book runners, along with Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, JP Morgan and UBS.”
My oh my, they make it sound so great, except that we need this gift like a hole in the head, with the only true beneficiaries , the financial brokers and the bankers.
Making them richer and richer
The Philippines is already in a perfect position to do what Brazil did in 2005, which paid all its $15-billion debt while telling the IMF to go to hell. Argentina did the same after defaulting and negotiating a 70%-write-off. Today, it is one of the most dynamic economies in Latin America, growing between 8 to 9% per annum.
Our title for this week’s piece is “Consumers/taxpayers should revolt” because the continuing additional public utility rate hikes and tax increases are absolutely useless to those paying them.
The money extracted goes only to making the financial oligarchy richer and richer while the real, physical economy gets dried up even more. It’s time to revolt for real!
(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; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
Friday, January 20, 2012
The ERC vs impeach hearings
DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
1/20/2012
It is not just the country’s Chief Justice (CJ) on trial but the entire social and political establishment of the Philippines. Last Monday, two hearings of note were held. One involved Supreme Court (SC) CJ Renato Corona, while the other, the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) and the issues before it.
Amid a hodgepodge of allegations of betrayal of public trust, the Corona impeachment trial may well unearth tens of millions of pesos of anomalies in material terms. But, as the latter speaks of P30 billion to P50 billion in direct annual losses to the pockets of every Filipino for the last seven years and the years to come, it certainly constitutes more of a lasting damage to the life of the nation’s economy if it were not resolved in the people’s favor. This much has been affirmed by business, labor, energy and economic experts, as well as consultants, both foreign and local, and most especially, consumer advocates, who have long protested such grave injustice.
For the past eight years, the ERC has run afoul of several crucial decisions of the SC that sought to protect Filipino electricity consumers. In 2003, the Puno-led tribunal had already made several very important rulings: 1) a refund of the P28-billion Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) overcharging since 1994 (which has not been fully concluded today, leaving a question as to whether the power company actually took this out from consumers’ payments or its own equity); 2) an affirmation of the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (Epira)’s Return on Rate Base (RoRB) of 12 percent as a fair and just method of determining return on capital; 3) a declaration that corporate income tax payments cannot be charged to consumers as Meralco has done; and 4) an order for the Commission on Audit (CoA) to scrutinize Meralco’s books, which led to the discovery of P14 billion in overcharges for 2003 and 2007.
By exploiting a loophole in the Epira, the ERC, in complete defiance of the SC, replaced the RoRB that had been thoroughly threshed out by the high court with a so-called Performance Based Regulation (PBR) scheme that allowed rates of return to zoom up to 15 and well over 17 percent — with incentives to boot! This also gave Meralco the leeway to continue charging its income tax to customers under a new guise and the ERC further excuse to write rules that open it to charges of corruption.
The Jan. 16 ERC hearing was on two related petitions: “(a) Application for Approval of Maximum Average Price (MAP) for 2012, (b) Translation of the (said) MAP… into a Distribution Rate Structure for Meralco’s Various Customer Classes.” Yet, the ERC is hearing these without first settling prejudicial questions.
For one, Mang Naro Lualhati’s motion for reconsideration on the ERC’s approval of the capital expense claim of Meralco, upon which its (rounded off) MAP of P1.60/kWh is based — an overstated amount as shown by earlier CoA findings, which correct rate should only be P0.90/kWh — is still pending. For another, fellow advocate Jojo Borja’s petition for a temporary restraining order (TRO) on the ERC hearing, pending resolution of his protest for the regulatory agency’s disregard of his evidence of Meralco’s overprice of its own poles, transformers, and substations by over 500 percent, has yet to be acted on.
Moreover, as another warrior in our cause, Butch Junia, demanded that these prejudicial questions be settled first, drawing the ire of a very well-suited Meralco lawyer, he proceeded to question the “regulatory liaison” budget approved by the ERC for Meralco to the tune of P2.2 billion (for the regulatory period of four years) or P550 million per year.
First of all, aren’t we, taxpayers, already funding the ERC to regulate and communicate with all energy providers? Why then should Meralco have its own budget for “liaison” charged to us consumers?
And what exactly is “liaison?” The Free Online Dictionary says that liaison is “an instance or a means of communication between different groups or units; one that maintains communication; a close relationship, connection, or link; an adulterous relationship; an affair.”
Now, if theirs isn’t one that mirrors the latter definitions, do both really need P550 million a year just to communicate?
Since we are today guaranteeing Meralco a 16-percent profit margin, as opposed to the 12 percent ruled as fair by the SC of 2003; and as Mang Naro has shown that the power firm’s annual P9-billion capital expense should only be P1 billion; notwithstanding Jojo Borja’s revelation that many of the most essential equipments used in its rate base application are overpriced by as much as 500 percent, or Butch Junia’s exposé of its P550-million annual “liaison” budget (which we will raise with the courts in the near future), aren’t we ending up with a total of P50 billion in annual electricity rate overcharging, as approved by the ERC?
Third party consultants of both the ERC and Meralco themselves have stated for the record that Meralco’s assets are underutilized by as much as 50 percent. So why are yearly increases and an expansion of Meralco’s asset base still being approved while the power company’s market grows by only 2 percent?
Inasmuch as I was prevailed upon by my home network to join its Senate impeachment watch, I immediately seized the opportunity to raise the greater significance of the ERC hearing there, as I am doing in this column today.
The real handlers of BS Aquino III (the Makati Business Club, US Embassy, “evil society”) are the very same ones behind the impeachment-ouster of President Joseph Estrada more than a decade ago. Their purpose is to distract from the continuing plunder by the oligarchs and the foreign financial mafia.
The script is almost exactly the same. The Epira then was passed right before an unsuspecting public just as Estrada was made a scapegoat. Today, the power plunder rages on as some other scapegoats are paraded anew.
(Tune in to 1098AM, dwAD, Sulo ng Pilipino/Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m.; watch Destiny Cable GNN’s HTL edition of Talk News TV, Saturdays, 8:15 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11:15 p.m., on “QC’s last HURA in 2012;” visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
Herman Tiu Laurel
1/20/2012
It is not just the country’s Chief Justice (CJ) on trial but the entire social and political establishment of the Philippines. Last Monday, two hearings of note were held. One involved Supreme Court (SC) CJ Renato Corona, while the other, the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) and the issues before it.
Amid a hodgepodge of allegations of betrayal of public trust, the Corona impeachment trial may well unearth tens of millions of pesos of anomalies in material terms. But, as the latter speaks of P30 billion to P50 billion in direct annual losses to the pockets of every Filipino for the last seven years and the years to come, it certainly constitutes more of a lasting damage to the life of the nation’s economy if it were not resolved in the people’s favor. This much has been affirmed by business, labor, energy and economic experts, as well as consultants, both foreign and local, and most especially, consumer advocates, who have long protested such grave injustice.
For the past eight years, the ERC has run afoul of several crucial decisions of the SC that sought to protect Filipino electricity consumers. In 2003, the Puno-led tribunal had already made several very important rulings: 1) a refund of the P28-billion Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) overcharging since 1994 (which has not been fully concluded today, leaving a question as to whether the power company actually took this out from consumers’ payments or its own equity); 2) an affirmation of the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (Epira)’s Return on Rate Base (RoRB) of 12 percent as a fair and just method of determining return on capital; 3) a declaration that corporate income tax payments cannot be charged to consumers as Meralco has done; and 4) an order for the Commission on Audit (CoA) to scrutinize Meralco’s books, which led to the discovery of P14 billion in overcharges for 2003 and 2007.
By exploiting a loophole in the Epira, the ERC, in complete defiance of the SC, replaced the RoRB that had been thoroughly threshed out by the high court with a so-called Performance Based Regulation (PBR) scheme that allowed rates of return to zoom up to 15 and well over 17 percent — with incentives to boot! This also gave Meralco the leeway to continue charging its income tax to customers under a new guise and the ERC further excuse to write rules that open it to charges of corruption.
The Jan. 16 ERC hearing was on two related petitions: “(a) Application for Approval of Maximum Average Price (MAP) for 2012, (b) Translation of the (said) MAP… into a Distribution Rate Structure for Meralco’s Various Customer Classes.” Yet, the ERC is hearing these without first settling prejudicial questions.
For one, Mang Naro Lualhati’s motion for reconsideration on the ERC’s approval of the capital expense claim of Meralco, upon which its (rounded off) MAP of P1.60/kWh is based — an overstated amount as shown by earlier CoA findings, which correct rate should only be P0.90/kWh — is still pending. For another, fellow advocate Jojo Borja’s petition for a temporary restraining order (TRO) on the ERC hearing, pending resolution of his protest for the regulatory agency’s disregard of his evidence of Meralco’s overprice of its own poles, transformers, and substations by over 500 percent, has yet to be acted on.
Moreover, as another warrior in our cause, Butch Junia, demanded that these prejudicial questions be settled first, drawing the ire of a very well-suited Meralco lawyer, he proceeded to question the “regulatory liaison” budget approved by the ERC for Meralco to the tune of P2.2 billion (for the regulatory period of four years) or P550 million per year.
First of all, aren’t we, taxpayers, already funding the ERC to regulate and communicate with all energy providers? Why then should Meralco have its own budget for “liaison” charged to us consumers?
And what exactly is “liaison?” The Free Online Dictionary says that liaison is “an instance or a means of communication between different groups or units; one that maintains communication; a close relationship, connection, or link; an adulterous relationship; an affair.”
Now, if theirs isn’t one that mirrors the latter definitions, do both really need P550 million a year just to communicate?
Since we are today guaranteeing Meralco a 16-percent profit margin, as opposed to the 12 percent ruled as fair by the SC of 2003; and as Mang Naro has shown that the power firm’s annual P9-billion capital expense should only be P1 billion; notwithstanding Jojo Borja’s revelation that many of the most essential equipments used in its rate base application are overpriced by as much as 500 percent, or Butch Junia’s exposé of its P550-million annual “liaison” budget (which we will raise with the courts in the near future), aren’t we ending up with a total of P50 billion in annual electricity rate overcharging, as approved by the ERC?
Third party consultants of both the ERC and Meralco themselves have stated for the record that Meralco’s assets are underutilized by as much as 50 percent. So why are yearly increases and an expansion of Meralco’s asset base still being approved while the power company’s market grows by only 2 percent?
Inasmuch as I was prevailed upon by my home network to join its Senate impeachment watch, I immediately seized the opportunity to raise the greater significance of the ERC hearing there, as I am doing in this column today.
The real handlers of BS Aquino III (the Makati Business Club, US Embassy, “evil society”) are the very same ones behind the impeachment-ouster of President Joseph Estrada more than a decade ago. Their purpose is to distract from the continuing plunder by the oligarchs and the foreign financial mafia.
The script is almost exactly the same. The Epira then was passed right before an unsuspecting public just as Estrada was made a scapegoat. Today, the power plunder rages on as some other scapegoats are paraded anew.
(Tune in to 1098AM, dwAD, Sulo ng Pilipino/Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m.; watch Destiny Cable GNN’s HTL edition of Talk News TV, Saturdays, 8:15 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11:15 p.m., on “QC’s last HURA in 2012;” visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
Monday, January 16, 2012
Squabbling while the nation sinks
DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
1/16/2012
A Nov. 10 to 23, 2011 survey by Pulse Asia reported last week by Jocelyn Montemayor found that 97 percent of Filipinos say “their lives were affected by worsening economic conditions.” The same survey reported that the number of people who “felt,” which I take to mean palpably sensed, the economic deterioration jumped from 16 percent in Oct. 2010 to 38 percent a year later, in what can be described as a dramatic doubling.
This makes me wonder how the same survey outfit can still find that BS Aquino III’s approval ratings are staying at a high 70-percent rate. This also makes me wonder if the people surveyed are disjointed in their brains of if the controlled mass media have really done a terrific job of obfuscating issues so as to stunt the public’s capacity for perception.
What is clear is that Filipinos are facing a deepening crisis and, contrary to many columnists’ sanguine projections, 2012 holds even grimmer prospects.
Last Wednesday, Jan. 11, InterAksyon.com reported that the Department of Energy (DoE) is “gear(ing) up for fuel rationing, transport subsidies” in case “tensions in the Middle East trigger a fuel shortage.” As we have been tracking the events there, we have consistently asked what the leadership of this country is doing in case a war affecting the Strait of Hormuz and, consequently, global oil supply triggers a worldwide shortage and price spike from $150 to $200/bbl.
The current Philippine oil stockpile ranges only from 30 to 60 days, and more frequently it is at the minimum. These are indeed ridiculous levels, considering that it takes about that long for shipments to arrive from the sources.
Curiously, an August 2011 newspaper report discussed the call (such as from our many columns) for government to stockpile oil requirements for as much as six months to one year. But, in that same report, a certain Jorge Montepeque, global director for pricing at Platts (a US oil trading company), was also interviewed. He said that such a proposal would only do harm as stockpiling would cause oil prices to rise. Of course, that pronouncement from the said executive, no matter how inane it was, must have been taken as a diktat to government and political authorities to shut up on the matter as the economic managers who earlier raised the idea never did so again.
That advice was inane for the simple reason that the Philippines’ whole year demand won’t even cause a blip in the oil markets, where prices are manipulated by speculators on a daily basis — prices which we, in turn, are compelled to always accept at their highest levels since we buy only what can be delivered because of the short lead time, and never at a cheaper price than the last offer. So, in order to get us out of this quagmire, the next logical question is where to get the money for a stockpile that will last us a good six months to one year.
Ah, but only a few like us would say that money is the least of our problems since we already have that P1.7-trillion Special Deposit Account (SDA) kept in the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) that yields four percent in interest earnings for banks when it can be used to earn multiples of that in our stockpiling of oil.
Then, we also have the surplus in our gross international reserves (GIR), which, in our discussion on how to properly release without appreciating the peso and harming the exchange rate that overseas Filipino workers (OFW) families rely on, finance forensics expert Hiro Vaswani of the Kilusan para sa Makabansang Ekonomiya (KME) suggested for the BSP to stop lending $25 billion to the US in buying its Treasury Bills, and instead to use that for our domestic needs — one of which is the country’s stockpiling of oil.
As our annual oil imports amount to around $14 billion, we have more than enough money to afford such a stockpile. Yet, while any sane person would never doubt the economic security and benefit we would get out of it, our economic managers remain inutile, all because they are useless slaves of Western financial interests.
Oil prices jumped to $101/bbl when Iran warned off a US aircraft carrier during a naval exercise of the Iranian Navy two weeks ago. For sure, we can expect more of such tensions in the Strait of Hormuz — through which 80 percent of oil for our country passes and a major part of which is legally considered under Iran’s jurisdiction.
The Iranian parliament is now considering legislation either to limit passage through that strait or to charge fees for it and to ban warships from passing, which are a response to US saber-rattling.
But even without these tensions, the global trend of oil prices is on the upswing due to the higher cost of extraction. As such, oil stockpiling is always a safe bet even on a purely commercial basis. Still, we need to underscore the economic stability that can be derived from having a large oil stockpile, especially since an oil shock that will lead to a complete economic standstill for an unprepared nation like the Philippines would be devastating.
Thus, one must realize how irresponsible and brainless this BS Aquino III government is today, creating imagined terror threats and picking fights left and right to create an atmosphere ripe for authoritarianism while real economic terror stalks the land.
The crisis the nation will face in 2012 will require all the people and political sectors to rally around the flag in order to survive. And as the growing internecine fighting is only going to doom the nation, a New Third Force that is neither Aquino nor Arroyo; neither Yellow nor Red; and neither Right nor Left must arise to offer the leadership that the present government cannot give as it winds down its self-destructive path.
(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, with this week’s topic, “QC Real Estate Tax Scam in 2012;” visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
Herman Tiu Laurel
1/16/2012
A Nov. 10 to 23, 2011 survey by Pulse Asia reported last week by Jocelyn Montemayor found that 97 percent of Filipinos say “their lives were affected by worsening economic conditions.” The same survey reported that the number of people who “felt,” which I take to mean palpably sensed, the economic deterioration jumped from 16 percent in Oct. 2010 to 38 percent a year later, in what can be described as a dramatic doubling.
This makes me wonder how the same survey outfit can still find that BS Aquino III’s approval ratings are staying at a high 70-percent rate. This also makes me wonder if the people surveyed are disjointed in their brains of if the controlled mass media have really done a terrific job of obfuscating issues so as to stunt the public’s capacity for perception.
What is clear is that Filipinos are facing a deepening crisis and, contrary to many columnists’ sanguine projections, 2012 holds even grimmer prospects.
Last Wednesday, Jan. 11, InterAksyon.com reported that the Department of Energy (DoE) is “gear(ing) up for fuel rationing, transport subsidies” in case “tensions in the Middle East trigger a fuel shortage.” As we have been tracking the events there, we have consistently asked what the leadership of this country is doing in case a war affecting the Strait of Hormuz and, consequently, global oil supply triggers a worldwide shortage and price spike from $150 to $200/bbl.
The current Philippine oil stockpile ranges only from 30 to 60 days, and more frequently it is at the minimum. These are indeed ridiculous levels, considering that it takes about that long for shipments to arrive from the sources.
Curiously, an August 2011 newspaper report discussed the call (such as from our many columns) for government to stockpile oil requirements for as much as six months to one year. But, in that same report, a certain Jorge Montepeque, global director for pricing at Platts (a US oil trading company), was also interviewed. He said that such a proposal would only do harm as stockpiling would cause oil prices to rise. Of course, that pronouncement from the said executive, no matter how inane it was, must have been taken as a diktat to government and political authorities to shut up on the matter as the economic managers who earlier raised the idea never did so again.
That advice was inane for the simple reason that the Philippines’ whole year demand won’t even cause a blip in the oil markets, where prices are manipulated by speculators on a daily basis — prices which we, in turn, are compelled to always accept at their highest levels since we buy only what can be delivered because of the short lead time, and never at a cheaper price than the last offer. So, in order to get us out of this quagmire, the next logical question is where to get the money for a stockpile that will last us a good six months to one year.
Ah, but only a few like us would say that money is the least of our problems since we already have that P1.7-trillion Special Deposit Account (SDA) kept in the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) that yields four percent in interest earnings for banks when it can be used to earn multiples of that in our stockpiling of oil.
Then, we also have the surplus in our gross international reserves (GIR), which, in our discussion on how to properly release without appreciating the peso and harming the exchange rate that overseas Filipino workers (OFW) families rely on, finance forensics expert Hiro Vaswani of the Kilusan para sa Makabansang Ekonomiya (KME) suggested for the BSP to stop lending $25 billion to the US in buying its Treasury Bills, and instead to use that for our domestic needs — one of which is the country’s stockpiling of oil.
As our annual oil imports amount to around $14 billion, we have more than enough money to afford such a stockpile. Yet, while any sane person would never doubt the economic security and benefit we would get out of it, our economic managers remain inutile, all because they are useless slaves of Western financial interests.
Oil prices jumped to $101/bbl when Iran warned off a US aircraft carrier during a naval exercise of the Iranian Navy two weeks ago. For sure, we can expect more of such tensions in the Strait of Hormuz — through which 80 percent of oil for our country passes and a major part of which is legally considered under Iran’s jurisdiction.
The Iranian parliament is now considering legislation either to limit passage through that strait or to charge fees for it and to ban warships from passing, which are a response to US saber-rattling.
But even without these tensions, the global trend of oil prices is on the upswing due to the higher cost of extraction. As such, oil stockpiling is always a safe bet even on a purely commercial basis. Still, we need to underscore the economic stability that can be derived from having a large oil stockpile, especially since an oil shock that will lead to a complete economic standstill for an unprepared nation like the Philippines would be devastating.
Thus, one must realize how irresponsible and brainless this BS Aquino III government is today, creating imagined terror threats and picking fights left and right to create an atmosphere ripe for authoritarianism while real economic terror stalks the land.
The crisis the nation will face in 2012 will require all the people and political sectors to rally around the flag in order to survive. And as the growing internecine fighting is only going to doom the nation, a New Third Force that is neither Aquino nor Arroyo; neither Yellow nor Red; and neither Right nor Left must arise to offer the leadership that the present government cannot give as it winds down its self-destructive path.
(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, with this week’s topic, “QC Real Estate Tax Scam in 2012;” visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
Sunday, January 15, 2012
People and their religion
BACKBENCHER
Rod Kapunan
1/14-15/2012
When the disciples of theocracy incorporated provisions in the Constitution giving preference to religious organizations, little did they realize it could lead to the proliferation of cultism. However, my contention is not about the tax privileges they enjoy, but the consequence in the proliferation of dubious sects and cults headed by yokels and downright ignoramuses preaching their stupid version of the bible to generate more tithe from their enthralled and often blind followers than to educate them.
These yokels even publicly proclaim themselves as the modern-day messiah and do their senseless monologue to harangue converts as “sinners”, telling them their only way to salvation is to be baptized without elaborating that their being one with them would mean additional income. Unfortunately, the wretched followers are in a more pathetic situation for they suffer both from ignorance and from poverty.
A poor soul who has nowhere else to go can only cling to the transcendental promise of nothing. If a hypochondriac feels he has an illness, faith in his religion is his only affordable elixir. If one could no longer bear his miseries, he has to condition his mind to accepting death gracefully. After all, God has a special place for the poor in His kingdom. I say this because religion is the only single endeavor of man that routinely promotes intellectual regression, and is true to the saying that he who allows himself to be converted by a yokel is twice ignorant than the preacher. For this why I am reminded by that well-written observation made by British essayist, Christopher Hitchens, “god is not Great: How Religion Poisons everything.”
For all our claims of having the most advance legal minds in Asia, we only managed to come out with a yokel interpretation of religious freedom. No one from among our supposedly brilliant luminaries has raised the point that freedom of religion has reference to human beings. It can never be extended to any ecclesiastical organization or for a demagogue to exercise his ascendancy over his followers, much that only a rational mind can feel and appreciate the meaning of freedom. We cannot even think of a Church without a single follower, for not even God would know it was organized in His honor. It is the followers that determine its existence, and the exercise of its existence can only come from the believers.
It is this hillbilly interpretation of freedom of religion that allowed charlatans to exploit it to their own selfish advantage. Such a bastardized interpretation now explains why churches and temples have become the safe haven for scoundrels styling themselves as the “man of God.” Like their vice of extolling to their members with the ominous threat of excommunication to vote for the “candidates of the Church”, they readily invoke the freedom of religion. The entranced members diligently obey all for that cheap alibi that it is part of their so-called “religious discipline”, and not a blatant transgression of their political right that God himself would not even dare violate.
But for all their heathen interpretation of what constitutes religious freedom, they forgot that the Church can never have a candidate. Rather, it is the religious leaders directly benefiting from their ignorance who are assiduous in wanting them to win, equating their victory with odious vulgarity as the will of God but without telling them about the higher premium for patronage that mired this country deeper into corruption. Come election time, corrupt political leaders pay homage to religious leaders, and religious leaders, in turn, act not as holy men but as kingpins gambling on the fate of our desperate people. Second, it did not even seeped into their mind they are the ones violating the secular and sacred right of man to freely choose his candidate. Again, this issue has never been argued because religious organizations have become strong to a point that our corrupted politicians have been blackmailed to acceding to their unwarranted caprices.
Our fearful reverence to these yokels hiding behind the cloak of religious freedom is in fact destroying the sinews of our democratic tradition with some even pretending as the plenipotentiary of God. Their encroachment into all facets in our society has become lewd. People who experienced less religious interference in their society think that we are silly because of our inordinate exhibition of faith. Imagine in every public office, where often bribery routinely occurs, one could readily see in one corner an altar with the image of Jesus Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary, and not far is the imposing frame of a notoriously corrupt public official. Some wonder if they were purposely placed almost side by side to convey a message that their boss is not only honest but have equally been blessed by God.
Those literate guardians of the faith should have known that altars should have their special place. Once people are accustomed to casually passing the place sanctified by some self-righteous hypocrites as holy could greatly diminish one’s respect for his religion without him being conscious of it. It is not only in government offices where we see make-shift altars, but in practically all business establishments owned by Catholics where images are venerated. This observation led some to ask how come no image of Christ is hung on walls inside nightclubs, beerhouses, pubs and karaoke bars?
Since our Neanderthal interpretation about the destiny of man with his creator, serving Him has become a lucrative profession, and they germinated as some kind of pandemic disease. It is for this why many are appalled seeing former murderers, rapists, convicts and swindlers turned preachers and openly exhibiting some kind of orgasmic forgiveness from their beguiled followers about their heinous past. Fanatics are stultified by that awkward exhibition of demagoguery when normal persons have more valid reasons to listen to one who lived a clean life all throughout. Some are even advocating to their members to indulge in some kind of exotic behavior, perverted practices, and quackery. Such is symptomatic of a morally degenerating society. I say this for while we cultivate into our consciousness the value of faith, we forgot to instill the value of self-discipline; that without discipline our faith would be nothing.
Finally, all religions are man’s elixir in life. If he is sick and desperate, he could only to renew his faith. In that, it is not faith he reaffirms, but would want God for create a miracle to heal whatever malady he suffers. If by chance he recovers, that then could groundswell to solidify the belief that indeed a miracle happened. If the awaited miracle failed to heal his sickness, his reaffirmation of faith nonetheless would serve to assure him of a blissful life after death. Such is the ultimate expression of man’s selfishness for even on the verge of death man would always want to be reassured. As in all beings, death is what we fear, and it is only faith that provides us the inexplicable medium to face to accept the unknown.
(rodkap@yahoo.com.ph)
Rod Kapunan
1/14-15/2012
When the disciples of theocracy incorporated provisions in the Constitution giving preference to religious organizations, little did they realize it could lead to the proliferation of cultism. However, my contention is not about the tax privileges they enjoy, but the consequence in the proliferation of dubious sects and cults headed by yokels and downright ignoramuses preaching their stupid version of the bible to generate more tithe from their enthralled and often blind followers than to educate them.
These yokels even publicly proclaim themselves as the modern-day messiah and do their senseless monologue to harangue converts as “sinners”, telling them their only way to salvation is to be baptized without elaborating that their being one with them would mean additional income. Unfortunately, the wretched followers are in a more pathetic situation for they suffer both from ignorance and from poverty.
A poor soul who has nowhere else to go can only cling to the transcendental promise of nothing. If a hypochondriac feels he has an illness, faith in his religion is his only affordable elixir. If one could no longer bear his miseries, he has to condition his mind to accepting death gracefully. After all, God has a special place for the poor in His kingdom. I say this because religion is the only single endeavor of man that routinely promotes intellectual regression, and is true to the saying that he who allows himself to be converted by a yokel is twice ignorant than the preacher. For this why I am reminded by that well-written observation made by British essayist, Christopher Hitchens, “god is not Great: How Religion Poisons everything.”
For all our claims of having the most advance legal minds in Asia, we only managed to come out with a yokel interpretation of religious freedom. No one from among our supposedly brilliant luminaries has raised the point that freedom of religion has reference to human beings. It can never be extended to any ecclesiastical organization or for a demagogue to exercise his ascendancy over his followers, much that only a rational mind can feel and appreciate the meaning of freedom. We cannot even think of a Church without a single follower, for not even God would know it was organized in His honor. It is the followers that determine its existence, and the exercise of its existence can only come from the believers.
It is this hillbilly interpretation of freedom of religion that allowed charlatans to exploit it to their own selfish advantage. Such a bastardized interpretation now explains why churches and temples have become the safe haven for scoundrels styling themselves as the “man of God.” Like their vice of extolling to their members with the ominous threat of excommunication to vote for the “candidates of the Church”, they readily invoke the freedom of religion. The entranced members diligently obey all for that cheap alibi that it is part of their so-called “religious discipline”, and not a blatant transgression of their political right that God himself would not even dare violate.
But for all their heathen interpretation of what constitutes religious freedom, they forgot that the Church can never have a candidate. Rather, it is the religious leaders directly benefiting from their ignorance who are assiduous in wanting them to win, equating their victory with odious vulgarity as the will of God but without telling them about the higher premium for patronage that mired this country deeper into corruption. Come election time, corrupt political leaders pay homage to religious leaders, and religious leaders, in turn, act not as holy men but as kingpins gambling on the fate of our desperate people. Second, it did not even seeped into their mind they are the ones violating the secular and sacred right of man to freely choose his candidate. Again, this issue has never been argued because religious organizations have become strong to a point that our corrupted politicians have been blackmailed to acceding to their unwarranted caprices.
Our fearful reverence to these yokels hiding behind the cloak of religious freedom is in fact destroying the sinews of our democratic tradition with some even pretending as the plenipotentiary of God. Their encroachment into all facets in our society has become lewd. People who experienced less religious interference in their society think that we are silly because of our inordinate exhibition of faith. Imagine in every public office, where often bribery routinely occurs, one could readily see in one corner an altar with the image of Jesus Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary, and not far is the imposing frame of a notoriously corrupt public official. Some wonder if they were purposely placed almost side by side to convey a message that their boss is not only honest but have equally been blessed by God.
Those literate guardians of the faith should have known that altars should have their special place. Once people are accustomed to casually passing the place sanctified by some self-righteous hypocrites as holy could greatly diminish one’s respect for his religion without him being conscious of it. It is not only in government offices where we see make-shift altars, but in practically all business establishments owned by Catholics where images are venerated. This observation led some to ask how come no image of Christ is hung on walls inside nightclubs, beerhouses, pubs and karaoke bars?
Since our Neanderthal interpretation about the destiny of man with his creator, serving Him has become a lucrative profession, and they germinated as some kind of pandemic disease. It is for this why many are appalled seeing former murderers, rapists, convicts and swindlers turned preachers and openly exhibiting some kind of orgasmic forgiveness from their beguiled followers about their heinous past. Fanatics are stultified by that awkward exhibition of demagoguery when normal persons have more valid reasons to listen to one who lived a clean life all throughout. Some are even advocating to their members to indulge in some kind of exotic behavior, perverted practices, and quackery. Such is symptomatic of a morally degenerating society. I say this for while we cultivate into our consciousness the value of faith, we forgot to instill the value of self-discipline; that without discipline our faith would be nothing.
Finally, all religions are man’s elixir in life. If he is sick and desperate, he could only to renew his faith. In that, it is not faith he reaffirms, but would want God for create a miracle to heal whatever malady he suffers. If by chance he recovers, that then could groundswell to solidify the belief that indeed a miracle happened. If the awaited miracle failed to heal his sickness, his reaffirmation of faith nonetheless would serve to assure him of a blissful life after death. Such is the ultimate expression of man’s selfishness for even on the verge of death man would always want to be reassured. As in all beings, death is what we fear, and it is only faith that provides us the inexplicable medium to face to accept the unknown.
(rodkap@yahoo.com.ph)
Year Starter: No New Year
CONSUMERS DEMAND!
Herman Tiu Laurel
1/9-15/2012
This column has no desire to be the Scrooge while it tries to change the calendar pages with jubilation.
But I would be remiss in its duty if I just went along and pretended: Pretended that the holidays have indeed been that merry at all and that the New Year will bring with it change for the better.
The national and global picture does not present a promising New Year, especially in the local scene when it begins with an increase in power and water rates mandated by the “capex” (capital expenditures) of the privatized utilities approved by the regulatory agencies.
We are facing the “end of the remittance-led growth” economy too, exemplified by the “Saudization” in Saudi Arabia of “nitaqat,” as well as economic downturn and crises in many other Middle Eastern countries as well as US and Europe.
This year’s export crisis will continue to the next. A measly 5.2% growth is projected for 2012, barely enough to keep from falling off the economic treadmill.
Hoping things may get better
Let’s stop fooling ourselves hoping that by doing so things may get better.
It doesn’t work that way. It plays into the designs of the exploitative hegemonic foreign interests, the local ruling class and its corrupt system’s cultural distractions to prevent the people from waking up and admit how harsh and miserable their situation is.
Let’s get everyone to look hard at the realities and accept that the New Year can only bring more of the worst of the past, and change our attitude from feigning ignorance of the abuse and exploitation imposed on us in the unnecessary and unjust foreign and local debts on our shoulders and instead to start active resistance against those debts; from acquiescence to the thievery of our public assets through privatization of our basic utilities (including oil), vital public infrastructures (such as toll ways, ports, trains, etc.), and the price/rates gouging to demanding and fighting for re-nationalization and re-regulation of all these prices and rates.
Better life for all
The objective measure for a society, its economy and its social institutions, is its success in giving a better life to all citizens.
In China, Singapore, Argentina, to cite a few, this is clear.
Here, even the Filipino middle class is reeling from the overburdening of power, water, transport and toll fee rates while VAT has been expanded again and again over the past 25 years while a move has been made since the new regime was installed to raise it from 12% to 15.6%.
Meanwhile, the BIR and Customs are continuously being pressed by the IMF and World Bank for greater and greater collection which will redound to higher prices, lower business margins (except for the BIR and Customs cohorts) which will all cause a drag on job generation.
This litany of disastrous economic impositions all the administrations continuing Cory Aquino’s “Yellow” legacy have implemented is endless.
Only Estrada, who was never Yellow, stopped power, water and other rate hikes and cut MRT fares in his short 2½ years.
Low-intensity conflict
While changes of these onerous economic policies are crying out to be done, the BS Aquino III administration is engaged in “low-intensity conflict” with the Supreme Court and preparing for one with China (egged on by the US).
These intend to mask the economic crimes being waged against the Filipino consumer, taxpayer and citizens.
Mainstream media and the two major survey outfits, controlled either by direct relatives of BS Aquino III or by foreign polling networks, support the LIC campaign; echoing the mantra of BS Aquino III’s high ratings despite contrary reality of hardships upon the people.
The survey/media mantra creates the impression of a gospel truth despite the fact that BS Aquino III created enormous crises like the 3.6% collapsed 2011 growth rate.
This management of perception one of the most formidable obstacles to our crusade to enlighten and awaken the people to the basic reality that the Aquino government is aggressively demolishing any economic and social hope for the country.
People first, profits later
Our nation cannot have a future the way things have been run the past 25 years and continuing to this day, under the direction of the global exploiters from the West who have not spared their own people, too, in the US or Europe.
Yet, the prevailing political and financial “leaders” here continue to drag us along the financial and economic paradigms of the West with it globalization, privation, deregulation and liberalization.
The countries succeeding – like China, Argentina, Singapore, et al – have first curtailed debts, then, took the opposite road of the “social market” system.
This, simply meaning “People first, profits later”.
In the old economic jargon it was called “mixed economy,” with a balance of public-national enterprises and private businesses which Marcos was implementing.
They stopped Marcos.
The Core of the New Philippines
If there is to be a New Year ever again, it will over and against the interference, intervention and obstructionism of the Western financial institutions and US political sabotage, they suppress sovereign and independent economic and political leadership.
I have been receiving very encouraging e-mails from readers and it is enlightened and awakened Filipinos such as these who will form the core of the New Philippines in the coming years.
(Tune in to Sulong Pilipino/Radyo OpinYon, Mon. to Fri., 5 to 6 p.m. on 1098AM; Talk News TV with HTL, Saturday, 8.15-9 p.m., replay 11 p.m., on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for articles and radio and GNN shows)
Herman Tiu Laurel
1/9-15/2012
This column has no desire to be the Scrooge while it tries to change the calendar pages with jubilation.
But I would be remiss in its duty if I just went along and pretended: Pretended that the holidays have indeed been that merry at all and that the New Year will bring with it change for the better.
The national and global picture does not present a promising New Year, especially in the local scene when it begins with an increase in power and water rates mandated by the “capex” (capital expenditures) of the privatized utilities approved by the regulatory agencies.
We are facing the “end of the remittance-led growth” economy too, exemplified by the “Saudization” in Saudi Arabia of “nitaqat,” as well as economic downturn and crises in many other Middle Eastern countries as well as US and Europe.
This year’s export crisis will continue to the next. A measly 5.2% growth is projected for 2012, barely enough to keep from falling off the economic treadmill.
Hoping things may get better
Let’s stop fooling ourselves hoping that by doing so things may get better.
It doesn’t work that way. It plays into the designs of the exploitative hegemonic foreign interests, the local ruling class and its corrupt system’s cultural distractions to prevent the people from waking up and admit how harsh and miserable their situation is.
Let’s get everyone to look hard at the realities and accept that the New Year can only bring more of the worst of the past, and change our attitude from feigning ignorance of the abuse and exploitation imposed on us in the unnecessary and unjust foreign and local debts on our shoulders and instead to start active resistance against those debts; from acquiescence to the thievery of our public assets through privatization of our basic utilities (including oil), vital public infrastructures (such as toll ways, ports, trains, etc.), and the price/rates gouging to demanding and fighting for re-nationalization and re-regulation of all these prices and rates.
Better life for all
The objective measure for a society, its economy and its social institutions, is its success in giving a better life to all citizens.
In China, Singapore, Argentina, to cite a few, this is clear.
Here, even the Filipino middle class is reeling from the overburdening of power, water, transport and toll fee rates while VAT has been expanded again and again over the past 25 years while a move has been made since the new regime was installed to raise it from 12% to 15.6%.
Meanwhile, the BIR and Customs are continuously being pressed by the IMF and World Bank for greater and greater collection which will redound to higher prices, lower business margins (except for the BIR and Customs cohorts) which will all cause a drag on job generation.
This litany of disastrous economic impositions all the administrations continuing Cory Aquino’s “Yellow” legacy have implemented is endless.
Only Estrada, who was never Yellow, stopped power, water and other rate hikes and cut MRT fares in his short 2½ years.
Low-intensity conflict
While changes of these onerous economic policies are crying out to be done, the BS Aquino III administration is engaged in “low-intensity conflict” with the Supreme Court and preparing for one with China (egged on by the US).
These intend to mask the economic crimes being waged against the Filipino consumer, taxpayer and citizens.
Mainstream media and the two major survey outfits, controlled either by direct relatives of BS Aquino III or by foreign polling networks, support the LIC campaign; echoing the mantra of BS Aquino III’s high ratings despite contrary reality of hardships upon the people.
The survey/media mantra creates the impression of a gospel truth despite the fact that BS Aquino III created enormous crises like the 3.6% collapsed 2011 growth rate.
This management of perception one of the most formidable obstacles to our crusade to enlighten and awaken the people to the basic reality that the Aquino government is aggressively demolishing any economic and social hope for the country.
People first, profits later
Our nation cannot have a future the way things have been run the past 25 years and continuing to this day, under the direction of the global exploiters from the West who have not spared their own people, too, in the US or Europe.
Yet, the prevailing political and financial “leaders” here continue to drag us along the financial and economic paradigms of the West with it globalization, privation, deregulation and liberalization.
The countries succeeding – like China, Argentina, Singapore, et al – have first curtailed debts, then, took the opposite road of the “social market” system.
This, simply meaning “People first, profits later”.
In the old economic jargon it was called “mixed economy,” with a balance of public-national enterprises and private businesses which Marcos was implementing.
They stopped Marcos.
The Core of the New Philippines
If there is to be a New Year ever again, it will over and against the interference, intervention and obstructionism of the Western financial institutions and US political sabotage, they suppress sovereign and independent economic and political leadership.
I have been receiving very encouraging e-mails from readers and it is enlightened and awakened Filipinos such as these who will form the core of the New Philippines in the coming years.
(Tune in to Sulong Pilipino/Radyo OpinYon, Mon. to Fri., 5 to 6 p.m. on 1098AM; Talk News TV with HTL, Saturday, 8.15-9 p.m., replay 11 p.m., on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for articles and radio and GNN shows)
Friday, January 13, 2012
Cordero and Palparan
DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
1/13/2012
Jovito Palparan is supposed to be the “butcher,” “serial murderer,” and “berdugo” accused of hunting, killing, or making countless communists and New People’s Army (NPA) adherents “disappear” through the years. Nobody as yet epitomizes the notion of human rights violators in the Philippines more than the retired army general. In fact, a reward for information leading to his capture in connection with the reported torture and disappearance of UP students Sherlyn Cadapan and Karen Empeño has now been raised to P1 million. But, as the courts have yet to try the case, howls of protests against his “conviction by publicity” and “demonization” have also been raised by certain quarters in the military.
Indeed, Palparan, with his beady eyes and sharply angled, bony mien (resembling a skull face), strikes many people with instinctive horror. And this has led to nothing short of a propaganda boon to the anti-military Left and human rights groups.
Meanwhile, on the other end of the spectrum, a fellow named Danilo “Danny” Cordero, a far lesser known historical figure in Philippine political and military history, is no less controversial--that is, if his supposed deeds were to be ventilated as much as Palparan’s alleged atrocities.
Danny, according to various accounts from many former leaders of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and the NPA that I have heard myself, was deceased--or should I say, killed--in the communist purges of the late 1980s. Some say this was done to silence the history of what really transpired at Plaza Miranda--a bombing that killed nine and injured 95 others, including many Liberal Party candidates except Ninoy Aquino.
Accounts that trace Danny’s liquidation to the highest leadership of the CPP-NPA have been found credible by the likes of former Senator Jovito Salonga (who was one of the bombing victims in 1971), especially as these come from Cordero’s former comrades, Ruben Guevarra and Ariel Almendral.
As soldiers trained to fight those deemed by their higher political and military authorities as enemies, Palparan and Cordero certainly share many things in common. Both apparently carried out their duties with unquestioning zeal and dedication. Both risked their lives in the endeavors they chose and followed the dictum, “Theirs not to make reply / Theirs not to reason why / Theirs but to do and die,” from Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “The Charge of the Light Brigade” (which won me in my youth a first prize in declamation at St. Stephen’s High School).
Yet, both of them share also one tragic commonality that highlights their shared dilemma: The masters they served later on turned out to be their tormentors and executioners after the need to cover up the indefensible evils, which they were ordered to commit, became greater. And this is a scenario that should make all combatants from all sides pause and think.
While the CPP-NPA and Jose Ma. Sison have persistently denied any responsibility for the Plaza Miranda bombing to gain a propaganda coup against Marcos, testimonies from former CPP-NPA members themselves (including some personal friends) provide the preponderance of proof.
We had to establish the basis for the charge against Cordero in order to draw another comparison: Did Danny Cordero’s killing of nine totally innocent individuals, including a five-year old child, with the two grenades he lobbed at Plaza Miranda constitute less of a crime than the disappearance of two UP students, which investigators and activists attribute to Palparan and his men?
While the Human Rights Commission and the Department of Justice have called Palparan to account, shouldn’t they also, even posthumously, formally investigate the Plaza Miranda-Cordero case?
Bringing justice to victims of human rights violations is good for as long as authorities remain fair and consistent. Thus, this demand for consistency brings us to so many cases that have not been taken up with any zeal, like the killings at Hacienda Luisita, where, in the most recent instance, 14 farm workers from the United Luisita Workers Union and Central Azucarera de Tarlac and their kin (including two children) were killed.
Yes, there is pressure to safeguard human rights via the West and the US’ support of many Left-leaning human rights groups in the Third World. But these Western human rights bodies should also look fairly at the charges from other countries, such as those coming from Russia’s Foreign Ministry that lambast Guantanamo abuses and innocent death row executions, or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s civilian killings in Libya, ad nausea.
Cordero, once touted as one of the best of the CPP-NPA cadres, was sacrificed at the altar of a failed communist revolution. Palparan is on the run and may soon have to face an ignominious surrender to the government he served in the anti-communist cause.
Palparan’s life was never easy, I know. One of our family drivers, who once drove for the man, tells us of his elaborate daily security rigors--and it’s not a normal life that anyone would want. And yet, he is now being sacrificed at another altar--the altar of human rights, which every regular human being is required to uphold, except for those who are on top of the totem pole or the food chain. In the case of the Philippines, its chief violator is its so-called Big Brother, the US, which supplies arms to our Armed Forces while channeling various legal foundation and covert funds to the Left, the Right, as well as the Church, in tandem with the oligarchs who run our politics and government.
As I have said on my cable TV show with (Ret.) Commodore Rex Robles, Filipinos should debate to the death but never kill each other (except maybe those nasty foreign interlopers). Until we learn this, there will be more “useful idiots” sacrificed at the altar of causes and crusades that serve only those who divide and rule.
(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, with this week’s topic, “Electric Power Piracy 2012;” visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
Herman Tiu Laurel
1/13/2012
Jovito Palparan is supposed to be the “butcher,” “serial murderer,” and “berdugo” accused of hunting, killing, or making countless communists and New People’s Army (NPA) adherents “disappear” through the years. Nobody as yet epitomizes the notion of human rights violators in the Philippines more than the retired army general. In fact, a reward for information leading to his capture in connection with the reported torture and disappearance of UP students Sherlyn Cadapan and Karen Empeño has now been raised to P1 million. But, as the courts have yet to try the case, howls of protests against his “conviction by publicity” and “demonization” have also been raised by certain quarters in the military.
Indeed, Palparan, with his beady eyes and sharply angled, bony mien (resembling a skull face), strikes many people with instinctive horror. And this has led to nothing short of a propaganda boon to the anti-military Left and human rights groups.
Meanwhile, on the other end of the spectrum, a fellow named Danilo “Danny” Cordero, a far lesser known historical figure in Philippine political and military history, is no less controversial--that is, if his supposed deeds were to be ventilated as much as Palparan’s alleged atrocities.
Danny, according to various accounts from many former leaders of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and the NPA that I have heard myself, was deceased--or should I say, killed--in the communist purges of the late 1980s. Some say this was done to silence the history of what really transpired at Plaza Miranda--a bombing that killed nine and injured 95 others, including many Liberal Party candidates except Ninoy Aquino.
Accounts that trace Danny’s liquidation to the highest leadership of the CPP-NPA have been found credible by the likes of former Senator Jovito Salonga (who was one of the bombing victims in 1971), especially as these come from Cordero’s former comrades, Ruben Guevarra and Ariel Almendral.
As soldiers trained to fight those deemed by their higher political and military authorities as enemies, Palparan and Cordero certainly share many things in common. Both apparently carried out their duties with unquestioning zeal and dedication. Both risked their lives in the endeavors they chose and followed the dictum, “Theirs not to make reply / Theirs not to reason why / Theirs but to do and die,” from Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “The Charge of the Light Brigade” (which won me in my youth a first prize in declamation at St. Stephen’s High School).
Yet, both of them share also one tragic commonality that highlights their shared dilemma: The masters they served later on turned out to be their tormentors and executioners after the need to cover up the indefensible evils, which they were ordered to commit, became greater. And this is a scenario that should make all combatants from all sides pause and think.
While the CPP-NPA and Jose Ma. Sison have persistently denied any responsibility for the Plaza Miranda bombing to gain a propaganda coup against Marcos, testimonies from former CPP-NPA members themselves (including some personal friends) provide the preponderance of proof.
We had to establish the basis for the charge against Cordero in order to draw another comparison: Did Danny Cordero’s killing of nine totally innocent individuals, including a five-year old child, with the two grenades he lobbed at Plaza Miranda constitute less of a crime than the disappearance of two UP students, which investigators and activists attribute to Palparan and his men?
While the Human Rights Commission and the Department of Justice have called Palparan to account, shouldn’t they also, even posthumously, formally investigate the Plaza Miranda-Cordero case?
Bringing justice to victims of human rights violations is good for as long as authorities remain fair and consistent. Thus, this demand for consistency brings us to so many cases that have not been taken up with any zeal, like the killings at Hacienda Luisita, where, in the most recent instance, 14 farm workers from the United Luisita Workers Union and Central Azucarera de Tarlac and their kin (including two children) were killed.
Yes, there is pressure to safeguard human rights via the West and the US’ support of many Left-leaning human rights groups in the Third World. But these Western human rights bodies should also look fairly at the charges from other countries, such as those coming from Russia’s Foreign Ministry that lambast Guantanamo abuses and innocent death row executions, or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s civilian killings in Libya, ad nausea.
Cordero, once touted as one of the best of the CPP-NPA cadres, was sacrificed at the altar of a failed communist revolution. Palparan is on the run and may soon have to face an ignominious surrender to the government he served in the anti-communist cause.
Palparan’s life was never easy, I know. One of our family drivers, who once drove for the man, tells us of his elaborate daily security rigors--and it’s not a normal life that anyone would want. And yet, he is now being sacrificed at another altar--the altar of human rights, which every regular human being is required to uphold, except for those who are on top of the totem pole or the food chain. In the case of the Philippines, its chief violator is its so-called Big Brother, the US, which supplies arms to our Armed Forces while channeling various legal foundation and covert funds to the Left, the Right, as well as the Church, in tandem with the oligarchs who run our politics and government.
As I have said on my cable TV show with (Ret.) Commodore Rex Robles, Filipinos should debate to the death but never kill each other (except maybe those nasty foreign interlopers). Until we learn this, there will be more “useful idiots” sacrificed at the altar of causes and crusades that serve only those who divide and rule.
(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, with this week’s topic, “Electric Power Piracy 2012;” visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
Monday, January 9, 2012
New Year, old fight
DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
1/9/2012
I got this text from Butch Junia last Jan. 5 on the rate reset application of the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) before the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC): “The first hearing on… ERC case 2011-088 is set on 16 January at 2pm. This is the first hearing on merits after ERC granted provisional authority in Oct. 2011, to take effect July 1, 2012. The rate granted is P1.58/kWh BUT consumers led by Naro Lualhati say it’s only P0.90/kWh. ERC up to now has not addressed consumer opposition. Let us build awareness/interest/involvement of the public. Also work up media coverage. Can we also solicit help/appearance of Alan and Bono? Thank u.”
Not even a week of the New Year has passed and our consumer crusaders are back on the ball again, raring to engage the “enemies of the people” in the continuing war to bring public interest and consumer welfare back to the top of the nation’s priorities. It will be a daunting task for sure, as we need to overcome the oligarchy and mainstream media’s mass mind manipulation with “red herring” issues such as that “Little Girl” and Corona.
Still, we have to doggedly go at it, lest Meralco has another year of bonanzas courtesy of the “provisional authority” granted to it by the ERC. We must remember that this provisional authority is granted even before issues meant to protect consumers are threshed out, which means that these are almost never resolved. And in the few times that they are, such as in the P30-billion Meralco refund case won by consumers in 2003, almost a decade passes and still the money owed by Meralco doesn’t get to be entirely paid. Worse, there is even an allegation that the power giant actually gets money for these payments from its hapless customers--an issue that remains unresolved to this day.
To refresh our memories, Mang Naro Lualhati had already questioned in 2010 the ERC-approved Performance Based Regulation (PBR) rate-setting scheme due to the fact that “overstated annual capital requirements” actually become the basis for massively distorted rate translations, which, in turn, discriminate against residential consumers who have to pay as high as P4/kWh (in distribution rates) while overwhelmingly favoring industrial/commercial users who only pay as low as P0.30/kWh--this, as the ERC-approved rate of over 15 percent is far beyond the legal reasonable 12-percent limit set by the Electric Power industry Reform Act (Epira), among other issues.
Jojo Borja, part owner of power company, Iligan Light, and now recognized as an “oppositor” by the ERC, has also charged Meralco with overpricing many components of its service--from its transformers and electric poles priced five times higher to its substation installations with an even higher overprice--facts that the foreign consultants of the ERC and Meralco had even admitted to.
And, as we transition from the old to the New Year, let us examine the many economic year-enders that have attempted to trace our economic problems. I included Ben Diokno’s “2012 will be better but…,” “Economic lessons from 2011” by Sonny Africa, “Riding out the turbulence” (Malaya editorial), Raul Fabella’s “Elite capture,” and many others. Yet none (except my own in various publications) has ever mentioned “the highest power cost in Asia” as a major root of our country’s economic problems.
I don’t know if they are actually being deliberate in missing this, but industry leaders, from the Philippine Chamber of Commerce to the Confederation of Philippine Exporters and the Employers Confederation of the Philippines, to name a few indicative groups, have already identified the exorbitant power rates in the country as the major hindrance to encouraging investments and, hence, industry and employment.
Tragically, BS Aquino III has not made a single quip on this problem in the past 20 months, preferring to make a mountain out of an alleged P14-million condo unit of Corona instead of the P14-billion annual larceny in the power distribution sector and hundreds of billions in the other power units (such as the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines, which owes government $4-billion in payments for the transmission grid that was earning government P18 billion annually before), compelling the Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp. to borrow and burden taxpayers with P85 billion more in loans for 2012, after getting P75 billion in 2011.
The current year will usher in more “magic” for the power sector as four Napocor (National Power Corp.) power barges (101 to 104) are set to be privatized while a power shortage is created in Mindanao (see Jan. 5 headline “Rotating outages to hit south-central Mindanao”). At the blink of an eye, these four power barges sold off to oligarchs are sure to suddenly come on line at the opportune time. But wait. There is another momentous event coming in the power sector that we should brace for.
Little noticed was the recent creation of a new agency, the “institutionalization of an independent market operator (IMO) that shall oversee the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (Wesm)… (assuming) vast powers in the approval of market rule changes and in the appointment of board memberships.” What we are about to see is a concentration of power over policies and prices in a body that the public has no control over, which is likely beyond what the Epira had ever envisioned.
The members to the five-man IMO are required not to have any relations with any member of the Wesm, or the private power companies, at least two years prior; but that’s a joke since even today many Cabinet officials have conflicts-of-interest with their former (and prospective) corporate employers.
What we need is a body with members who are unquestionably on the side of the consumers and taxpayers--something that we will never see under the present dispensation.
(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; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
Herman Tiu Laurel
1/9/2012
I got this text from Butch Junia last Jan. 5 on the rate reset application of the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) before the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC): “The first hearing on… ERC case 2011-088 is set on 16 January at 2pm. This is the first hearing on merits after ERC granted provisional authority in Oct. 2011, to take effect July 1, 2012. The rate granted is P1.58/kWh BUT consumers led by Naro Lualhati say it’s only P0.90/kWh. ERC up to now has not addressed consumer opposition. Let us build awareness/interest/involvement of the public. Also work up media coverage. Can we also solicit help/appearance of Alan and Bono? Thank u.”
Not even a week of the New Year has passed and our consumer crusaders are back on the ball again, raring to engage the “enemies of the people” in the continuing war to bring public interest and consumer welfare back to the top of the nation’s priorities. It will be a daunting task for sure, as we need to overcome the oligarchy and mainstream media’s mass mind manipulation with “red herring” issues such as that “Little Girl” and Corona.
Still, we have to doggedly go at it, lest Meralco has another year of bonanzas courtesy of the “provisional authority” granted to it by the ERC. We must remember that this provisional authority is granted even before issues meant to protect consumers are threshed out, which means that these are almost never resolved. And in the few times that they are, such as in the P30-billion Meralco refund case won by consumers in 2003, almost a decade passes and still the money owed by Meralco doesn’t get to be entirely paid. Worse, there is even an allegation that the power giant actually gets money for these payments from its hapless customers--an issue that remains unresolved to this day.
To refresh our memories, Mang Naro Lualhati had already questioned in 2010 the ERC-approved Performance Based Regulation (PBR) rate-setting scheme due to the fact that “overstated annual capital requirements” actually become the basis for massively distorted rate translations, which, in turn, discriminate against residential consumers who have to pay as high as P4/kWh (in distribution rates) while overwhelmingly favoring industrial/commercial users who only pay as low as P0.30/kWh--this, as the ERC-approved rate of over 15 percent is far beyond the legal reasonable 12-percent limit set by the Electric Power industry Reform Act (Epira), among other issues.
Jojo Borja, part owner of power company, Iligan Light, and now recognized as an “oppositor” by the ERC, has also charged Meralco with overpricing many components of its service--from its transformers and electric poles priced five times higher to its substation installations with an even higher overprice--facts that the foreign consultants of the ERC and Meralco had even admitted to.
And, as we transition from the old to the New Year, let us examine the many economic year-enders that have attempted to trace our economic problems. I included Ben Diokno’s “2012 will be better but…,” “Economic lessons from 2011” by Sonny Africa, “Riding out the turbulence” (Malaya editorial), Raul Fabella’s “Elite capture,” and many others. Yet none (except my own in various publications) has ever mentioned “the highest power cost in Asia” as a major root of our country’s economic problems.
I don’t know if they are actually being deliberate in missing this, but industry leaders, from the Philippine Chamber of Commerce to the Confederation of Philippine Exporters and the Employers Confederation of the Philippines, to name a few indicative groups, have already identified the exorbitant power rates in the country as the major hindrance to encouraging investments and, hence, industry and employment.
Tragically, BS Aquino III has not made a single quip on this problem in the past 20 months, preferring to make a mountain out of an alleged P14-million condo unit of Corona instead of the P14-billion annual larceny in the power distribution sector and hundreds of billions in the other power units (such as the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines, which owes government $4-billion in payments for the transmission grid that was earning government P18 billion annually before), compelling the Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp. to borrow and burden taxpayers with P85 billion more in loans for 2012, after getting P75 billion in 2011.
The current year will usher in more “magic” for the power sector as four Napocor (National Power Corp.) power barges (101 to 104) are set to be privatized while a power shortage is created in Mindanao (see Jan. 5 headline “Rotating outages to hit south-central Mindanao”). At the blink of an eye, these four power barges sold off to oligarchs are sure to suddenly come on line at the opportune time. But wait. There is another momentous event coming in the power sector that we should brace for.
Little noticed was the recent creation of a new agency, the “institutionalization of an independent market operator (IMO) that shall oversee the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (Wesm)… (assuming) vast powers in the approval of market rule changes and in the appointment of board memberships.” What we are about to see is a concentration of power over policies and prices in a body that the public has no control over, which is likely beyond what the Epira had ever envisioned.
The members to the five-man IMO are required not to have any relations with any member of the Wesm, or the private power companies, at least two years prior; but that’s a joke since even today many Cabinet officials have conflicts-of-interest with their former (and prospective) corporate employers.
What we need is a body with members who are unquestionably on the side of the consumers and taxpayers--something that we will never see under the present dispensation.
(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; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
Sunday, January 8, 2012
What to do with Corona
BACKBENCHER
Rod Kapunan
1/7-8/2012
The upcoming trial of impeached Chief Justice Renato Corona initiated by this implacably self-righteous government of President Benigno “PNoy” Aquino will either be one of “for show” or end up as “no show” at all. Such is the anticipation of many. Either way it goes the public would not like it. That then would expose the truth that either the Aquino government is bluffing it has an airtight case against what it insists as a known lackey of Mrs. Arroyo or that it simply bungled the whole thing.
No doubt the beleaguered Chief Justice is a callous protégé of one who for almost 10 years styled herself President of this God-forsaken land of ours. Even if we are to take it that his appointment was beyond cavil legal, the hitch is, was the person who appointed him vested with the legal authority? Of course, that is no longer the issue the Senate Impeachment Court will resolve. Besides, that has been decided by the same collegial body long before this foamingly vindictive government came to power by the electronic magic of computerization. What causes this good-for-nothing administration to have his tantrum is it cannot stomach seeing Corona a minute sitting behind the bench.
Do doubt, Corona is also feeling the heat of the vexatious charges that have been lined up against him, although from a strict legal standpoint they will never touch first base. Nonetheless, his predicament of being impeached by the House by the same midnight maneuvering process serves as a moral lesson that it will not do good to anybody to be appointed by photo finish as race aficionados would put it, especially from one whose status is as equally questionable.
Yes, Corona could insist his appointment was perfectly legal and valid, and the best proof he could cite was the same collegial decision upholding his appointment on a case specifically lodged against him. The problem is, in his alacrity to get hold of the post, even breaking the tradition of seniority of by-passing many who were appointed ahead of him to the High Court, he cannot now say no iota of impropriety marred his appointment.
His appointment may not warrant a reversal by the same court of that opprobrious decision, but definitely the case against him now has its focus on public opinion that in the end could magnify his integrity. It may not be a crime or a violation, but certainly it could hamper his credibility and that now puts him on equal footing with the one now languishing in her detention center.
Corona being scrutinized and judged on his credibility is no doubt beyond the realm of legality, and there is no way he can fight back like saying let us to stick to the rules. For then that would only heighten the cynical perception of the people towards the judiciary. Besides, impropriety can never be rectified by the expediency of securing a declaration to make an immoral act legal. It is on this pivotal aspect where many of our miserable and pathetic justices and judges failed to discern. It is the same persistent attitude of claiming that what they do is always in accordance with law that tore down the credibility of the judiciary.
For this equally arrogant administration to redeem itself from the embarrassment the best it could have done was to impeach altogether those pusillanimous justices who voted to ratify Corona’s coronation as Chief Justice. For upholding that morally questionable appointment, their removal altogether would suffice that they acted not with impropriety, but conspired to commit an act of impropriety. That could put to a crucible test the hullabaloo called checks and balance in our system of government. It could also put to an end the presidential prerogative and those arrogant termites called the Judicial and Bar Council who wants a share of that power in reducing those supposedly independent-minded judges and justices to that of shameless minions of the President. Booting out all of them is to use their weapon of voting by collegiality to kick out all those remnants who voted to ratify an appointment that was at the outset morally wrong.
As it is, the political centurions of this administration want to punish Chief Justice Corona for his bias in favor of his former boss in Malacañang, specifically for allowing Mrs. Arroyo to seek medical treatment abroad. That approach manifests this administration’s preoccupation on the vagary of amor propio because the real issue remains about the inappropriateness of the appointment.
To question him why he voted with the rest of his pro-GMA colleagues in the Supreme Court is to acquiesce to the validity of the power of the one who appointed him. Corona has a point at least from this compartmentalize legal standpoint; that he cannot be faulted for voting with the rest of the majority. Rather, the administration should have booked all those justices for impeachment, and that could have put to an end the wrangle of who is right and who is legal.
Adding complication is the fact that the Supreme Court then lorded by the minions of the political hijacker legalized that brazen act of political vandalism. Yes, the issue is now water under the bridge, but looking back, the appointee cannot be made more guilty as the one who appointed him, especially if she only had with her a fake cloak of people’s mandate. President Aquino should have sorted out this possibility of overhauling the entire judicial system for only then could he erase those infamous blot marks that made our jurisprudence something of a big joke. The problem however is that the Aquino government is having second thoughts in not wanting to spoil everything.
Finally, because the administration doubts it could pull the number to convict Corona, the tongue of those spokesmen now waggles about their so-called “Plan B.” Maybe there is no such thing as double jeopardy in impeachment even if the accused was acquitted for failure to obtain the necessary vote, but should these cretins crying for blood be permitted to take that drastic approach would the administration not appear silly? In such event, it would confirm the long-drawn suspicion that indeed something is wrong with this administration.
(rodkap@yahoo.com.ph)
Rod Kapunan
1/7-8/2012
The upcoming trial of impeached Chief Justice Renato Corona initiated by this implacably self-righteous government of President Benigno “PNoy” Aquino will either be one of “for show” or end up as “no show” at all. Such is the anticipation of many. Either way it goes the public would not like it. That then would expose the truth that either the Aquino government is bluffing it has an airtight case against what it insists as a known lackey of Mrs. Arroyo or that it simply bungled the whole thing.
No doubt the beleaguered Chief Justice is a callous protégé of one who for almost 10 years styled herself President of this God-forsaken land of ours. Even if we are to take it that his appointment was beyond cavil legal, the hitch is, was the person who appointed him vested with the legal authority? Of course, that is no longer the issue the Senate Impeachment Court will resolve. Besides, that has been decided by the same collegial body long before this foamingly vindictive government came to power by the electronic magic of computerization. What causes this good-for-nothing administration to have his tantrum is it cannot stomach seeing Corona a minute sitting behind the bench.
Do doubt, Corona is also feeling the heat of the vexatious charges that have been lined up against him, although from a strict legal standpoint they will never touch first base. Nonetheless, his predicament of being impeached by the House by the same midnight maneuvering process serves as a moral lesson that it will not do good to anybody to be appointed by photo finish as race aficionados would put it, especially from one whose status is as equally questionable.
Yes, Corona could insist his appointment was perfectly legal and valid, and the best proof he could cite was the same collegial decision upholding his appointment on a case specifically lodged against him. The problem is, in his alacrity to get hold of the post, even breaking the tradition of seniority of by-passing many who were appointed ahead of him to the High Court, he cannot now say no iota of impropriety marred his appointment.
His appointment may not warrant a reversal by the same court of that opprobrious decision, but definitely the case against him now has its focus on public opinion that in the end could magnify his integrity. It may not be a crime or a violation, but certainly it could hamper his credibility and that now puts him on equal footing with the one now languishing in her detention center.
Corona being scrutinized and judged on his credibility is no doubt beyond the realm of legality, and there is no way he can fight back like saying let us to stick to the rules. For then that would only heighten the cynical perception of the people towards the judiciary. Besides, impropriety can never be rectified by the expediency of securing a declaration to make an immoral act legal. It is on this pivotal aspect where many of our miserable and pathetic justices and judges failed to discern. It is the same persistent attitude of claiming that what they do is always in accordance with law that tore down the credibility of the judiciary.
For this equally arrogant administration to redeem itself from the embarrassment the best it could have done was to impeach altogether those pusillanimous justices who voted to ratify Corona’s coronation as Chief Justice. For upholding that morally questionable appointment, their removal altogether would suffice that they acted not with impropriety, but conspired to commit an act of impropriety. That could put to a crucible test the hullabaloo called checks and balance in our system of government. It could also put to an end the presidential prerogative and those arrogant termites called the Judicial and Bar Council who wants a share of that power in reducing those supposedly independent-minded judges and justices to that of shameless minions of the President. Booting out all of them is to use their weapon of voting by collegiality to kick out all those remnants who voted to ratify an appointment that was at the outset morally wrong.
As it is, the political centurions of this administration want to punish Chief Justice Corona for his bias in favor of his former boss in Malacañang, specifically for allowing Mrs. Arroyo to seek medical treatment abroad. That approach manifests this administration’s preoccupation on the vagary of amor propio because the real issue remains about the inappropriateness of the appointment.
To question him why he voted with the rest of his pro-GMA colleagues in the Supreme Court is to acquiesce to the validity of the power of the one who appointed him. Corona has a point at least from this compartmentalize legal standpoint; that he cannot be faulted for voting with the rest of the majority. Rather, the administration should have booked all those justices for impeachment, and that could have put to an end the wrangle of who is right and who is legal.
Adding complication is the fact that the Supreme Court then lorded by the minions of the political hijacker legalized that brazen act of political vandalism. Yes, the issue is now water under the bridge, but looking back, the appointee cannot be made more guilty as the one who appointed him, especially if she only had with her a fake cloak of people’s mandate. President Aquino should have sorted out this possibility of overhauling the entire judicial system for only then could he erase those infamous blot marks that made our jurisprudence something of a big joke. The problem however is that the Aquino government is having second thoughts in not wanting to spoil everything.
Finally, because the administration doubts it could pull the number to convict Corona, the tongue of those spokesmen now waggles about their so-called “Plan B.” Maybe there is no such thing as double jeopardy in impeachment even if the accused was acquitted for failure to obtain the necessary vote, but should these cretins crying for blood be permitted to take that drastic approach would the administration not appear silly? In such event, it would confirm the long-drawn suspicion that indeed something is wrong with this administration.
(rodkap@yahoo.com.ph)
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