DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
10/10/2011
While we are not going to look up the medical name for the malady of the disconnection between one’s brain and motor functions anymore, lest we be accused again of casting psychiatric aspersions, we can see many of its symptoms in government.
Of course, the Aquino III government did right by ordering the National Food Authority (NFA) “to buy storm-damaged palay to help the deluged farmers of Northern and Central Luzon. At least four million people were displaced by the winds and floods of two successive typhoons, and a season’s crop was soaked black. Flood waters have not receded in many areas and a very bleak Christmas awaits many of the stricken families. The order to salvage what can be saved of these soaked palays can only be done with the NFA ready to intervene in the market.
Yet, as Aquino III is ordering the state agency to perform its “Good Samaritan” act, two of his top honchos in Budget and Finance — namely, Butch Abad and Cesar Purisima — are doggedly hammering the abolition and privatization of the NFA.
For one, a fully privatized grains sector will not have any inclination to do public service in times of crisis. What is most likely is that it will wait for desperate typhoon and flood victims to plead for their soaked palays to be bought as animal feed as it hoards good rice stocks in order to raise prices.
If Aquino III were without the NFA today, who could he possibly have relied on to assist these unfortunate millions of rice farmers? This is the lesson he should pick up from the unfortunate disasters that have struck us the past two weeks. This is the very argument he should use to silence Abad and Purisima as this comes from wiser and far more experienced and dedicated voices, such as the NFA leaders and employees’ union, and even his own appointed administrator who has since become a defender of the NFA’s vital role in our economy.
So why are Abad and Purisima carrying on with their campaign by dishing out lies against the NFA, distorting its actual financial condition in order to project an utterly hopeless and corrupt image of it?
A fully privatized food, rice, and grains sector will mean the loss of our national food sovereignty and security, as the power over food supplies will be transferred completely to profit-seeking local and transnational traders.
Without food sovereignty and security, the nation will be enslaved to private parties who control its very means of survival and, consequently, compel it to give and do anything in exchange.
Abad and Purisima’s track record betrays clear servility to foreign interests, from pushing the IMF-WB’s Electric Power Industry Reform Act (Epira) to the maintenance of the debt-based financial system despite the overflowing funds lying idle in the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.
Elsewhere, there’s another disconnect: The Meralco (Manila Electric Co.) rate hike for October of P0.09 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) at a time when global fuel prices are going down, amid a surplus of hydro-power that should be evident with the hydro-electric dams overflowing.
The oil and natural gas-fueled independent power producers (IPPs) have indexed prices that defy the laws of supply and demand in the world, which apply only to the Philippines.
The official reason for the increase in rates, Meralco says, is that “the generation charge component, which it collects for its power suppliers, will rise by 14.19 centavos per kWh, but this hike will be partly offset by a 5-centavo decrease in the distributor’s own charges, resulting in a lower net increase…” Well, this is just a lie, in complicity with the Energy Regulatory Commission, as Meralco’s Maximum Average Price should not be P1.58 but P0.90/kWh.
Further, it says, “the increase in the generation charge is due to the use of more expensive liquid fuel by First Gen Corp.’s natural gas plants, following a supply restriction at Malampaya natural gas field from Sept. 22 to 25.” This is, of course, another BS.
Why should there be a supply restriction from Malampaya’s cheaper natural gas plant when we all know that it even exports a great part of its production?
Filipino power consumers should have the priority in the use of Malampaya natural gas; and this explanation from Meralco, which is tied to the Malampaya gas by sweetheart supply contracts from the Lopez era, does not go far enough into details to justify the hike.
Malacañang, in the wake of Meralco’s announcement and knowing how sensitive the issue already is, quickly follows up by saying that November power prices will see a decline, as if to show some concern.
But if it is really concerned, what Malacañang should do is to dig deeper into the present Meralco claims to find out the truth while compelling the power company to hold off its rate hike after a thorough hearing on its claims.
Meanwhile, the Code-NGO PEACe Bonds of P10 billion will be paid on Oct. 18 with P35 billion of the taxpayers’ money. The loan’s first beneficiaries were the conspirators of the Edsa II coup d’etat — the Ayala foundation, the Ateneo, NGOs associated with the Caucus of Development NGOs (Code-NGO), the Camacho siblings (one of whom is Gloria Arroyo’s former Finance Secretary), and some others.
This was plunder of the highest degree by people associated with Cory Aquino, from Dan Songco (who managed Cory’s NGOs) to Dinky Soliman et al. The funds from this transaction replaced former foreign funding that was substantially withdrawn from the Philippines when the US shifted its soft intensity conflict projects to other parts of the globe, leaving a few hundred NGO workers now making up another kind of NGO or Neo-Governmental Organizations as the subversive backbone against the Republic. This parallel bureaucracy (as seen in the Conditional Cash Transfer network) is intended to replace career civil service workers, with Aquino III as the president of this parallel network. Another major disconnect, indeed.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino/Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m. on 1098AM; Talk News TV with HTL, Saturday, 8:15 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8 on “Occupy Wall Street: Lessons for RP”; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
Monday, October 10, 2011
Sunday, October 9, 2011
The tollway fees
BACKBENCHER
Rod Kapunan
10/8-9/2011
Anybody with common sense could tell how the Supreme Court lost track of what it is supposed to do when it lifted its restraining order to stop the collection of the 12 percent value-added tax imposed on motorists using the country’s expressways. The government insists it needs additional revenue of between P2 billion and P3 billion to narrow the widening budget deficit. As usual, it is the people who are made to bear the burden.
Reexamining the current opposition, one would realize that the amount is only incidental. The indignation of many is why the High Court legalized the collection of tollway fees by the private operators. The question may sound philosophical, but knowing the wisdom behind the law is the only way to guide the courts to let the public understand that the exaction is “for their own good.”
That is supposed to be the case because there are basic obligations the state must undertake to justify its existence. It is its ability to carry out those obligations that justifies its right to collect taxes. To ensure that they are not hindered, the people entrust their government some extraordinary powers as those obligations are for their common good. One is the power of eminent domain.
Originally and as today, that power is exclusive only to the State. Although eminent domain pertains to the confiscation of real property for public use, the government nonetheless is committed to pay just compensation. This we must understand because road and bridge construction is essential to commerce, and is considered the lifeblood of the nation.
But when the father of the country’s privatization sold in 1994 the North Luzon Expressway to the Lopezes, he squarely placed in grave doubt that wisdom. Certainly the former owners of those escheated properties would not have meekly parted away with their lands had they anticipated that the government would sell them, just as they are now shouting to high heavens as they see those private tollway operators raking in much profit while the government imposed an additional burden called VAT to support itself.
The stupid “privateers” would argue that since the expressways are now in private hands, they have the right to impose VAT on services for income above P1.5 million a year. If so, then who told them to sell them when the government could have earned more in direct earnings had it retained ownership of those expressways following the logic that percentage-wise profit will always remain bigger than taxes? It is on this score that sensible Filipinos say the privatization of the expressways is a clear circumvention of the power of eminent domain.
The first decree, Presidential Decree No. 1005 issued on September 22, 1976 by then President Marcos allowed the reasonable collection of toll, but on a self-liquidating basis. That means fees will have to be collected to defray the cost advanced by the contractor, but should automatically stop upon full payment. Subsequently, P.D. No. 1112 issued on March 31, 1977 created the Toll Regulatory Board to regulate and check the amount collected from motorists. The same decree was amended by P.D. No. 1649 issued on October 26, 1979 authorizing the establishment of toll facilities on public improvements, and amending the Toll Regulatory Board.
The commuting public would not mind being charged an amount to defray the cost for its construction and a minimal amount for maintenance, but not for a private entity to continually amass profit out of the misuse of that extraordinary power that left them with no choice but to cede their properties. The motorists and the indignant commuters are asking whether there is a derivative power arising in the exercise of eminent domain like the power of the private expressway operators to collect toll fees. Their argument stems not from any socialistic sentiment, but out of plain logic that eminent domain is an instrument of the state, not of the private sector, so to put an order to our system of free enterprise.
The privatization of the expressways, like many of those industries sold by the Ramos administration, would obviously demand not just the maintenance of the toll, but would insist as a condition precedent the deregulation of their rate. That was bound to happen for then the concept of public service for the common good automatically ceased. Thus, it came as no surprise why right after the government-owned NLEX was handed to the Lopez-owned First Philippine Holdings, the toll was astronomically increased, by more than 1000 percent, from P21.50 to P218 from Balintawak to Sta. Ines.
Of course, the buyer-company carried out improvements, but just the same it was the public that shouldered the cost, notwithstanding that part of the funds used came in the form of a foreign loan. It is no longer a case of them required to use their profit to recapitalize their business or to borrow for additional capital to comply with their obligation pursuant to the grant of franchise.
The deregulation of the tollway fees contributed much to the unreasonable increase in the prices of goods and services. The corresponding inflation explains why the amount printed on the face of those paper bills has tremendously increased, but not its value. Having been made a permanent fixture, it is now the government that has to pathetically beg and justify the demand of the private operators so to raise its share in the VAT. In effect, the government now stands as co-principal in gouging the motorists for higher tollway fees.
Besides, the continued increase of the tolls is a limitation on the right of the individual to freely travel, except in the interest of national security, public safety or public health. Such interpretation of Section 6, Article III of the Constitution is not borne out of one’s fertile imagination, but rooted on the same postulate that the state is obligated to construct roads and bridges to allow people to freely travel for business, for family visitation, for religious pilgrimage or for the joy of traveling, and the driving force why they have to pay taxes.
The power of eminent domain is a residual right to our freedom to travel, and not the other way around. Sadly enough, our courts have totally forgotten if not ignored this constitutional mandate. So, as tollway fees continually increase, the courts wittingly or unwittingly allow the private operators to use that power to violate our sacred right to travel without restriction.
(rodkap@yahoo.com.ph)
Rod Kapunan
10/8-9/2011
Anybody with common sense could tell how the Supreme Court lost track of what it is supposed to do when it lifted its restraining order to stop the collection of the 12 percent value-added tax imposed on motorists using the country’s expressways. The government insists it needs additional revenue of between P2 billion and P3 billion to narrow the widening budget deficit. As usual, it is the people who are made to bear the burden.
Reexamining the current opposition, one would realize that the amount is only incidental. The indignation of many is why the High Court legalized the collection of tollway fees by the private operators. The question may sound philosophical, but knowing the wisdom behind the law is the only way to guide the courts to let the public understand that the exaction is “for their own good.”
That is supposed to be the case because there are basic obligations the state must undertake to justify its existence. It is its ability to carry out those obligations that justifies its right to collect taxes. To ensure that they are not hindered, the people entrust their government some extraordinary powers as those obligations are for their common good. One is the power of eminent domain.
Originally and as today, that power is exclusive only to the State. Although eminent domain pertains to the confiscation of real property for public use, the government nonetheless is committed to pay just compensation. This we must understand because road and bridge construction is essential to commerce, and is considered the lifeblood of the nation.
But when the father of the country’s privatization sold in 1994 the North Luzon Expressway to the Lopezes, he squarely placed in grave doubt that wisdom. Certainly the former owners of those escheated properties would not have meekly parted away with their lands had they anticipated that the government would sell them, just as they are now shouting to high heavens as they see those private tollway operators raking in much profit while the government imposed an additional burden called VAT to support itself.
The stupid “privateers” would argue that since the expressways are now in private hands, they have the right to impose VAT on services for income above P1.5 million a year. If so, then who told them to sell them when the government could have earned more in direct earnings had it retained ownership of those expressways following the logic that percentage-wise profit will always remain bigger than taxes? It is on this score that sensible Filipinos say the privatization of the expressways is a clear circumvention of the power of eminent domain.
The first decree, Presidential Decree No. 1005 issued on September 22, 1976 by then President Marcos allowed the reasonable collection of toll, but on a self-liquidating basis. That means fees will have to be collected to defray the cost advanced by the contractor, but should automatically stop upon full payment. Subsequently, P.D. No. 1112 issued on March 31, 1977 created the Toll Regulatory Board to regulate and check the amount collected from motorists. The same decree was amended by P.D. No. 1649 issued on October 26, 1979 authorizing the establishment of toll facilities on public improvements, and amending the Toll Regulatory Board.
The commuting public would not mind being charged an amount to defray the cost for its construction and a minimal amount for maintenance, but not for a private entity to continually amass profit out of the misuse of that extraordinary power that left them with no choice but to cede their properties. The motorists and the indignant commuters are asking whether there is a derivative power arising in the exercise of eminent domain like the power of the private expressway operators to collect toll fees. Their argument stems not from any socialistic sentiment, but out of plain logic that eminent domain is an instrument of the state, not of the private sector, so to put an order to our system of free enterprise.
The privatization of the expressways, like many of those industries sold by the Ramos administration, would obviously demand not just the maintenance of the toll, but would insist as a condition precedent the deregulation of their rate. That was bound to happen for then the concept of public service for the common good automatically ceased. Thus, it came as no surprise why right after the government-owned NLEX was handed to the Lopez-owned First Philippine Holdings, the toll was astronomically increased, by more than 1000 percent, from P21.50 to P218 from Balintawak to Sta. Ines.
Of course, the buyer-company carried out improvements, but just the same it was the public that shouldered the cost, notwithstanding that part of the funds used came in the form of a foreign loan. It is no longer a case of them required to use their profit to recapitalize their business or to borrow for additional capital to comply with their obligation pursuant to the grant of franchise.
The deregulation of the tollway fees contributed much to the unreasonable increase in the prices of goods and services. The corresponding inflation explains why the amount printed on the face of those paper bills has tremendously increased, but not its value. Having been made a permanent fixture, it is now the government that has to pathetically beg and justify the demand of the private operators so to raise its share in the VAT. In effect, the government now stands as co-principal in gouging the motorists for higher tollway fees.
Besides, the continued increase of the tolls is a limitation on the right of the individual to freely travel, except in the interest of national security, public safety or public health. Such interpretation of Section 6, Article III of the Constitution is not borne out of one’s fertile imagination, but rooted on the same postulate that the state is obligated to construct roads and bridges to allow people to freely travel for business, for family visitation, for religious pilgrimage or for the joy of traveling, and the driving force why they have to pay taxes.
The power of eminent domain is a residual right to our freedom to travel, and not the other way around. Sadly enough, our courts have totally forgotten if not ignored this constitutional mandate. So, as tollway fees continually increase, the courts wittingly or unwittingly allow the private operators to use that power to violate our sacred right to travel without restriction.
(rodkap@yahoo.com.ph)
Friday, October 7, 2011
Rice pila again?
DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
10/7/2011
The annual floods that are already an expected ritual by the Philippine population have come and gone (at least for most), but the problems caused by this latest deluge are certainly going to stay longer than the yet-to-recede flood waters in certain parts of Northern and Central Luzon.
This long submersion of our rice fields was one major issue on the mind of farmer-leader Sonny Domingo, whose post-“Pedring” assessment of the rice supply situation I asked for. “The problem,” he said, “is the proximity of the typhoons and floods which came one after the other in a span of a day or two (didn’t allow) the rice fields and rice stocks (enough) time to dry. (And as) 50 percent of Central Luzon rice harvests have been hit; now the grains are blackened.”
I immediately queried if we are going to have another rice pila — to which he said: “(Unless) we can bring in rice from Mindanao.” But there’s a catch: “We don’t have enough bottoms (ships) so they can’t ship enough.”
If it’s not the lack of one thing, it is another. And as the crises for Filipinos never seem to end, the urgent question for everyone now is whether Luzon and the rest of the country will be facing another rice supply crisis because of the recent calamities.
The top honcho of the Department of Agriculture (DA), politician Proceso Alcala, boasted in the first few months of the present administration (after sufficient rains blessed the country) that “We have achieved the highest production in history.” He even declared that, by 2013, we will not need to import anymore.
It seems his enthusiasm was so palpable that, according to one Internet account I read, “Old-timers in the Department of Agriculture who cautioned him from such an ‘impossible dream’ found (themselves) removed or canned.”
It wasn’t just that: Alcala boasted that only 500,000 metric tons of imports for 2012 (as against Gloria Arroyo’s last year imports of 2.45 million metric tons) would be necessary. That, of course, would be ideal as our farmer-leader Sonny Domingo will say. But given the realities, just a slight miscalculation will usher in hell and high water for the entire nation.
Just think of the grave error committed by Fidel Ramos’ dreamy-eyed DA secretary, Bobot Sebastian, who, upon his boss’ much-hyped “Kaya natin ito” and “high value crops” campaign, held back on securing buffer supplies and ended up with shocking images of rice queues for hours on end, with people waiting for their meager rice rations in lines that spanned hundreds of meters, and with rice delivery trucks being reportedly attacked by hungry folks desperate to feed their families.
Thus, my own advocacy for the country’s long-term food strategy is not only to address the rice production issue but also to start giving emphasis to changing our attitude toward the dietary staple.
I have personally shifted to consuming only kamoteng orange, something that my mother used to feed me by mixing into lugaw whenever I came down with a fever. That white or parchment-colored root crop on the outside (and orange inside) is what the Chinese use for nursing back the sick. I now take this every meal, avoiding white rice. I only take the latter once or twice a week whenever sinangag, paired with chicken-pork adobo, is laid out on the table (which I still find irresistible). But my “orange kamote and no rice habit” has caught on in the family; my diabetic wife finds that her blood sugar has decreased while my fitness-conscious son lost eight pounds of fat in a week by totally avoiding white rice.
The People’s Republic of China is engaged in a national drive to develop root crops — and a wide variety of it — as its future staple replacing rice. Potatoes and such root crops require a fifth of the water that rice needs to produce each calorie and pack more nutrients. China, of course, has produced wonders and miracles in multiplying its rice production yields from its own developed hybrids and vast irrigation system. It is a balanced development of that nation’s agriculture that has ensured its food security well into a quarter of a century into the future.
The problem with BS Aquino III’s Agriculture secretary is that he is building his promises on wild dreams without preparing the ground, and without a fully-integrated and balanced development plan that includes all the other branches of government. Maybe that’s what the National Food Authority sees as perilous, making it continuously urge for more buffer stocks.
Of course, importing rice has become an unpopular idea, especially since its massive abuse by the Arroyo administration. But, if immediate food security is essential, then it cannot be discounted.
The matter of actual supply versus statistical shortages, as reported by UP Los Baños expert Teodoro Mendoza, must therefore be checked out. We’re told that much of the supply, including plenty of smuggled rice, is in Mindanao. But then, Sonny Domingo’s info on lack of ships also becomes crucial. According to the office of Sen. Antonio Trillanes, our country’s Cabotage Law has made inter-island shipping so expensive that it is more costly to ship from Mindanao to Luzon than it is from foreign shores to Manila.
Indeed, the problem is more complicated than just a promise of rice self-sufficiency in two years’ time. It certainly requires more “coconuts,” i.e. brain power, to solve, (the literal version of) which, by the way, we will delve into in a future article.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino/Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m. on 1098AM; Talk News TV with HTL, Saturday, 8:15 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8 on “VAT, Fuel, Power Protests” with Rep. Tet Garcia and some NGOs; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
Herman Tiu Laurel
10/7/2011
The annual floods that are already an expected ritual by the Philippine population have come and gone (at least for most), but the problems caused by this latest deluge are certainly going to stay longer than the yet-to-recede flood waters in certain parts of Northern and Central Luzon.
This long submersion of our rice fields was one major issue on the mind of farmer-leader Sonny Domingo, whose post-“Pedring” assessment of the rice supply situation I asked for. “The problem,” he said, “is the proximity of the typhoons and floods which came one after the other in a span of a day or two (didn’t allow) the rice fields and rice stocks (enough) time to dry. (And as) 50 percent of Central Luzon rice harvests have been hit; now the grains are blackened.”
I immediately queried if we are going to have another rice pila — to which he said: “(Unless) we can bring in rice from Mindanao.” But there’s a catch: “We don’t have enough bottoms (ships) so they can’t ship enough.”
If it’s not the lack of one thing, it is another. And as the crises for Filipinos never seem to end, the urgent question for everyone now is whether Luzon and the rest of the country will be facing another rice supply crisis because of the recent calamities.
The top honcho of the Department of Agriculture (DA), politician Proceso Alcala, boasted in the first few months of the present administration (after sufficient rains blessed the country) that “We have achieved the highest production in history.” He even declared that, by 2013, we will not need to import anymore.
It seems his enthusiasm was so palpable that, according to one Internet account I read, “Old-timers in the Department of Agriculture who cautioned him from such an ‘impossible dream’ found (themselves) removed or canned.”
It wasn’t just that: Alcala boasted that only 500,000 metric tons of imports for 2012 (as against Gloria Arroyo’s last year imports of 2.45 million metric tons) would be necessary. That, of course, would be ideal as our farmer-leader Sonny Domingo will say. But given the realities, just a slight miscalculation will usher in hell and high water for the entire nation.
Just think of the grave error committed by Fidel Ramos’ dreamy-eyed DA secretary, Bobot Sebastian, who, upon his boss’ much-hyped “Kaya natin ito” and “high value crops” campaign, held back on securing buffer supplies and ended up with shocking images of rice queues for hours on end, with people waiting for their meager rice rations in lines that spanned hundreds of meters, and with rice delivery trucks being reportedly attacked by hungry folks desperate to feed their families.
Thus, my own advocacy for the country’s long-term food strategy is not only to address the rice production issue but also to start giving emphasis to changing our attitude toward the dietary staple.
I have personally shifted to consuming only kamoteng orange, something that my mother used to feed me by mixing into lugaw whenever I came down with a fever. That white or parchment-colored root crop on the outside (and orange inside) is what the Chinese use for nursing back the sick. I now take this every meal, avoiding white rice. I only take the latter once or twice a week whenever sinangag, paired with chicken-pork adobo, is laid out on the table (which I still find irresistible). But my “orange kamote and no rice habit” has caught on in the family; my diabetic wife finds that her blood sugar has decreased while my fitness-conscious son lost eight pounds of fat in a week by totally avoiding white rice.
The People’s Republic of China is engaged in a national drive to develop root crops — and a wide variety of it — as its future staple replacing rice. Potatoes and such root crops require a fifth of the water that rice needs to produce each calorie and pack more nutrients. China, of course, has produced wonders and miracles in multiplying its rice production yields from its own developed hybrids and vast irrigation system. It is a balanced development of that nation’s agriculture that has ensured its food security well into a quarter of a century into the future.
The problem with BS Aquino III’s Agriculture secretary is that he is building his promises on wild dreams without preparing the ground, and without a fully-integrated and balanced development plan that includes all the other branches of government. Maybe that’s what the National Food Authority sees as perilous, making it continuously urge for more buffer stocks.
Of course, importing rice has become an unpopular idea, especially since its massive abuse by the Arroyo administration. But, if immediate food security is essential, then it cannot be discounted.
The matter of actual supply versus statistical shortages, as reported by UP Los Baños expert Teodoro Mendoza, must therefore be checked out. We’re told that much of the supply, including plenty of smuggled rice, is in Mindanao. But then, Sonny Domingo’s info on lack of ships also becomes crucial. According to the office of Sen. Antonio Trillanes, our country’s Cabotage Law has made inter-island shipping so expensive that it is more costly to ship from Mindanao to Luzon than it is from foreign shores to Manila.
Indeed, the problem is more complicated than just a promise of rice self-sufficiency in two years’ time. It certainly requires more “coconuts,” i.e. brain power, to solve, (the literal version of) which, by the way, we will delve into in a future article.
(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino/Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m. on 1098AM; Talk News TV with HTL, Saturday, 8:15 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8 on “VAT, Fuel, Power Protests” with Rep. Tet Garcia and some NGOs; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
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