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)