---------- 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)
