Fwd: HTL DieHard III Column for 08-20-2014 WED

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Mentong Tiu <mentong2011@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Aug 20, 2014 at 2:25 PM
Subject: Fwd: HTL DieHard III Column for 08-20-2014 WED
To: annalizagaspar <annalizagaspar@gmail.com>




---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Laurence Siao <lcsiao@yahoo.com>
Date: Tue, Aug 19, 2014 at 12:46 AM
Subject: HTL DieHard III Column for 08-20-2014 WED
To: Tribune <mlatdt@gmail.com>, Tribune <mlatdt@yahoo.com>, Tribune-
Ninez <ninezolivares@yahoo.com>
Cc: Herman Tiu Laurel <mentong2011@gmail.com>, herman laurel
<htlnow@fastmail.fm>



People Power-less Revolution
(Herman Tiu Laurel / DieHard III / The Daily Tribune / 08-20-2014 WED)

Today, 14 years after the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (EPIRA)
was signed into law a few months after the Edsa II coup of 2001, the
Philippines is faced with another power supply crisis. The EPIRA was
supposed to have solved the shortage of power that began when Cory
Aquino and Joker Arroyo cancelled the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant and
appointed a power oligarch to head the National Power Corp. (Napocor)
after the Edsa I "People Power Revolution" of 1986.

The crisis worsened under the term of Fidel V. Ramos, who then signed
a host of horrendously overpriced supply contracts from independent
power producers, whose so-called power purchase agreements required
government (and, of course, consumers) to pay even for power that had
never been used, which resulted in a humongous debt for Napocor.

When the EPIRA was still being sold to the public in the euphoric wake
of Edsa II, its proponent packaged the power industry privatization
plan as the guarantee for the Napocor debt of $15 billion to be paid
off through sale of the state agency's assets, besides fostering
competition among private power companies that would ensure lower
power rates and foreign investments in the industry that would lead to
ample supply for always.

The reality 14 years after those promises were made, however, has
become absolutely disheartening, if not depressing, for the country's
power consumers and economy. The Napocor debt was never reduced and
the company that stands today under the name of PSALM (Power Sector
Assets and Liabilities Management Corp.) has its interest costs at a
whopping $16 billion or P650 billion, despite 90 percent of its assets
having been privatized!

Today the Philippines proudly touts the highest power cost in Asia, if
not the world (since 2001), and continues to have annual power crises
and shortages plaguing Mindanao, as well as Luzon and the rest of the
country.

No new capacity has really been installed despite a decade and a half
of profits going to the major power companies. In fact, just this
year, an industry giant, in partnership with its mother company, even
opened a new power plant in Singapore worth P800 billion.

Two years after the EPIRA became law, Filipino power consumers began
to understand that none of its promises were being fulfilled. As
such, one of the anti-Arroyo campaign issues in 2004 was the high
power cost.

From 2008 to this day, Mindanao suffers 12-hour daily brownouts
despite its rich hydroelectric capacities. Every year the Department
of Energy warns of supply shortfalls and asks for emergency
presidential powers to rent expensive diesel power barges, which
government had privatized before.

Twenty-six years after the Edsa I and Edsa II "People Power"
uprisings, the Filipino people find themselves without sufficient
electric power despite the highest price for it they are paying; and
they find themselves powerless to do anything about it. The same is
true for their supposed representatives in the Senate, Congress,
Malacañang, the courts, or even activists and consumer protection
groups, having been ironically blocked in all their efforts by those
institutions of government and the media that the private power
oligarchs control.

Today not only the people and power consumers find themselves
powerless in both the electrical and political senses of the word,
even real industry and labor organization leaders find themselves in
the same boat.

Since 2013, the different chambers of commerce and labor groups such
as the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines have demanded action on
the power crisis (such as the repeal of the EPIRA) but to no avail.

It seems that after the Edsa I and II "People Power" revolutions, the
real power in Philippine society turned out to be the "power
oligarchs" who became the plutocrats with the privatization of state
assets.

What we have witnessed the past 20 or so years is in reality a people
made "power-less" through economic and political policies that have
transferred the economic power of government and the state to the
rich.

It is time to realize this and reverse it through the genuine populist
revolution. Who's to lead this? They are already there; the people
need only to recognize them.

(Watch GNN Talk News TV with HTL on Destiny Cable Channel 8, SkyCable
Channel 213, and www.gnntv-asia.com, Saturday, 8:00 p.m. and replay
Sunday, 8 a.m.; tune in to 1098 AM, dwAD, Tuesday to Friday, 5 p.m.;
search Talk News TV and date of showing on YouTube; and visit
http://newsulongpilipino.blogspot.com)

Fwd: HTL DieHard III Column for 08-04-2014 MON

We need a good 'coup'
(Herman Tiu Laurel / DieHard III / The Daily Tribune / 08-04-2014 MON)

Why is most of the newspaper reportage on Sen. Sonny Trillanes'
comments on the possibility of a coup against BS Aquino skewed to the
negative? Is it because "mainstream media," which comprise most of
the broadsheets owned and run by those who have a stake in the
prevailing system, have a vested, self-serving interest to preserve
the current political-economic order in Philippine society?

Could it be that, just like their principals or alter egos in Big
Business, those in control of the information gateway would not want a
sudden change that could threaten their proximity to power, which only
a coup can bring?

I certainly want change in the Philippines, ASAP, as most Filipinos
do. This is why symbols of change are very popular in the country,
like the sensation that "Juana Change" has become at rallies,
demonstrations, and over social media.

Juana Change, as a character, has become a potent symbol, even though
the call for change has had far more profound advocates antedating
Juana by half-a-century, such as Renato Constantino or Alejandro
Lichauco--both nationalist intellectuals. The problem, though, with
the Juana Change genre is it dwells on forms and not essences, the
superficial and not the roots.

The Juana Change campaigns against political dynasties and the PDAF
(although not all are against the DAP) perennially flail against
"martial law" and "dictatorship," crying out for freedom and
democracy, but fail to go deeper into the real dynasties, the real
corruption, the real martial law and dictatorship, or the rhinestone
freedom and democracy that they claim to at least enjoy under the
present system.

That's why that type of reformism of the Yellows, resurgent after Edsa
Uno, has not brought about any change in their 25 years of being the
dominant "civil society" power.

Edsa Uno and the Yellow types have, in fact, worsened the situation of
the country and its people. Where before electricity, water, toll
fees, and housing provisions were affordable, if not cheap, under the
authoritarian government committed to national development, the
Yellows had condemned all these in favor of the prevailing system: the
authoritarianism of money for, of, and by the oligarchy and the
foreign powers behind it (the USA and its global plutocrats) in
extracting their gargantuan share of the nation's wealth through
enforced national debt, privatization, hiking of all prices, etc.

Forces from both the Left and the Right call for revolution. The
former promotes a people's revolution whereas the latter merely
subverts it through the various "color," "flower," or "season"
revolutions, as what we had witnessed with the Yellow Edsa Uno,
Georgia's Rose Revolution, or Egypt's Arab Spring--all with strong
backing from the National Endowment for Democracy, a US Central
Intelligence Agency adjunct.

The Left's revolution takes a lot more time and needs a confluence of
events to neutralize the foreign power's control, neither of which
Filipinos have time for before the total collapse of Philippine
society. That was what Thailand was facing just a few months ago
before the Thai military took over and stabilized the situation.

Unfortunately for the Thais, the military coup that took over kowtows
to their traditional ruling powers, where there will be no serious
structural change, no matter how thankful they might be for the
temporary restoration of order.

There can be better combinations of coups and counter-coups, which are
really one and the same species of political-military moves for
change. The coup and counter-coup of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela from
1992 to 2002, for instance, jumpstarted political and electoral
victories against US-oligarchic control in Venezuela and allowed the
nationalization of that country's oil resources, which are now devoted
to the welfare of the people.

Hugo Chavez had an intellectually developed core of military officers
guided by Bolivarianism and other progressive ideologies, and allied
with social movements. I know that Alejandro "Ding" Lichauco is an
admirer of the late leader. Renato Constantino, who passed away in
1999 and did not live to see the victory of Chavismo, would have
admired him too.

I would like to see a Chavismo group in the Philippines, participated
in by officers allied to a broad range of progressive movements who
will institute the following upon the completion of a successful
seizure of power:

1) The establishment of a "Constitutional Transition Government" as
preached by former Misamis Oriental governor Homobono Adaza, as well
as a National Unity council comprising all institutional stakeholders;

2) The restoration of basic utility services to public ownership and
control that will cut power and water rates radically to redistribute
the wealth monopolized by oligarchs to consumers themselves;

3) The postponement of elections until the Commission on Elections is
cleaned up and manual voting and precinct counting is restored, and
the scheduling of new elections within one year;

4) The renegotiation all national debt where immediate pay-offs shall
be made that will also lead to the removal of the nefarious Value
Added Tax system.

Juana Change, maybe when properly enlightened, can transform to Juana
Coup. That would take that genre of reformism one step higher.

In light of the Yellow Establishment domination of the current power
structure, people should ask themselves why "Yellow coups" such as
Edsa Uno and Edsa Dos are praised, while the others are despised by
mainstream media.

It's a pity Edsa Tres was aborted; we could have already seen real change then.

(Watch GNN Talk News TV with HTL on Destiny Cable Channel 8, SkyCable
Channel 213, and www.gnntv-asia.com, Saturday, 8:00 p.m. and replay
Sunday, 8 a.m.; tune in to 1098 AM, dwAD, Tuesday to Friday, 5 p.m.;
search Talk News TV and date of showing on YouTube; and visit
http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com)