YESTERDAY, TODAY & TOMORROW
Linggoy Alcuaz
10/10-12/2011
After a full year, a month and a week of faithfully writing and submitting my weekly “Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow” column, I finally failed last week.
That was after writing and submitting an even dozen of columns on a twice a week basis since OpinYon entered its second year.
I failed to write and submit both my Regular and Lite columns for last week.
Actually, I now write four columns a week - two in English for OpinYon and two in Pilipino for Diaryo Pinoy.
A Deadline Writer
The pace was taking its toll on me. I usually write at night. I usually end way past midnight. That means that I’m “puyat” four out of the seven nights of a week.
In spite of that, I have to wake up at 6 am from Monday to Friday to bring my daughter, Maria Teresa Margarita “Cuchie” to work.
I’m a deadline writer and I don’t have a reserve of timeless columns.
So, by hook or by crook, I have to finish my columns even if I’m way past the official deadline.
The problem of the hook and the crook is that at my age, I can no longer make “puyat” until morning.
At a certain point after midnight, not only my body but more so, my mind gives up.
I like to listen to oldies music while writing. I know that it’s time to give up and go to bed when I can write less than a paragraph per song.
Of Laptops & Wi-Fi
I don’t have my own computer. I rely on my son, Manuel Hermilo “Miko” to lend me either his desktop or laptop computer.
Usually, I use the laptop because I can choose my place, table and chair.
When I finish writing and have to Email my column, I have to look for a spot in the second floor of my home where the Wi-Fi signal reaches.
However, more than a month ago, the laptop broke and I was forced to use the desktop.
Then, my troubles multiplied.
I could no longer choose my place, table and chair. I was forced to go down to my son’s room and use his desktop, his computer table and his revolving chair.
Soon, my eyes, my back and my legs all ached.
I could no longer write my column in one seating. I had to write by installments.
I had to rest every two hours. I was submitting my columns later and later until it was the absolute deadline.
Ergo, I failed to submit.
Warm up from a Cold Start
Then, it became a pile up.
In one week, I failed to submit my Friday Diaryo Pinoy column.
Then, I also failed to submit my Monday Regular and Thursday Lite columns.
I rounded out the week by not submitting last Monday’s Diaryo Pinoy column.
So now that I’m back on the ball, I find out that it is difficult to warm up from a cold start.
Since I also missed submitting two of my Pilipino columns for Diaryo Pinoy, where my schedule is Mondays and Fridays, my mind is gone “kalawang” and my fingers feel heavy.
I used to paraphrase the PLDT ad, “Let your fingers do the walking” by saying that for me column writing is, “Let your fingers do the marching.”
Now, I feel that the physical side of writing is more difficult and less healthy than marching.
P-Noy goin' Bananas
While we were taking a well-deserved though enforced break and rest, P-Noy was going bananas.
The island of Luzon was struck by two typhoons – Pedring and Quiel.
P-Noy had just flexed his tourist muscles.
First, he went to the USA. There he succeeded in not having a hot dog, pizza or play station photo op.
Just back from his transpacific sojourn, P-Noy went to Japan. There, he donated a million dollars for the victims of the March 11 Japan earthquake and tsunami.
P-Noy did a Linggoy
When he came home, P-Noy disappeared from view. Maybe, like Linggoy, he got exhausted from his travels and took a break.
However, Linggoy only has to answer to his Publisher and Editor.
P-Noy has almost a hundred million bosses. Several millions of them were in distress due to the floodwaters caused by Pedring, Quiel and the monsoons.
They were waiting for P-Noy or, at the very least, his relief goods and rescue efforts.
P-Noy is the President. Linggoy is only Linggoy.
Linggoy, a Blue Baby
Jose Luis “Linggoy” was born in the morning of October 12, 1948 at the Lourdes Hospital along Shaw Blvd. in Bacood or Santa Mesa, Manila. His parents were Rosa Zaragoza Araneta and Manuel Tuason Alcuaz.
Rosa was the daughter of Carmen Zaragoza and Gregorio Araneta of Iloilo. Manuel was the son of Aurelia Tuason and Santiago Alcuaz of Intramuros, Manila.
Linggoy was almost a blue baby because of his delivery weight of over 12 lbs.
Since I am turning only 63, and not 75, 50 or 60, it is not mandatory for me to have a big celebration.
I had a big one when I turned 60 in 2008.
I cannot remember how big my 50th birthday party was.
Earlier, in mid-1996, I treated myself and my wife, Baby, to a trip to the USA.
I do hope that I can make it to my 75th Birthday.
Couples for Christ
I’m not sure what kind of a party I will have on Wednesday or Friday or Saturday or Sunday.
While I was asleep during our last bi-monthly Couples for Christ Household Prayer Meeting, my wife agreed to host the one at our home on my birthday.
She must have assumed that we would not have the resources to have a big celebration.
Our CFC Household has decreased from the original seven couples in 2003 despite three additional couples to the present four and a half.
The half is the widow of our Nonong and Letty Ignacio leader couple. The husband died at the UST Hospital last March on the eve of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan.
Of Deaths & Births
In 2003, when we were in our first year, two members immediately died.
The first was Jojo Ong, the wife of Andrew Ong. Jojo died of cancer in August or September. Andrew owns the Kirin Restaurant in Boni High Street in Ft. Bonifacio Global City.
The second was Dr. Cesar Reyes. Cesar graduated and practiced Medicine at the UST. He died of Heart Disease. He owned a hospital in Paranaque. His widow is Atty. Emma Reyes, the Secretary General of the Senate.
If I don’t get to throw a party, I will have other parties to go to.
Last Saturday was the 60th birthday of my oftentimes best friend, Herman “Mentong” Tiu Laurel.
It was also the 51st (Forgive me!) birthday of whistle blower par excellence, Sandra Cam.
Then, I can also expect to cut costs by having a joint family birthday party with my sister-in-law, Maria Rosario “Chona” Ramos Ahorro who celebrates her birthday on Oct. 13.
Happy Birthday too, to Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato “Rene” Coronado Corona who celebrates his birthday on Oct. 15.
Rene was my classmate in the Ateneo grade school, high school and college.. We were both cadet officers in the AFPMT as well as the AFROTC.
Monday, October 10, 2011
Disconnect
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)
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)
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)
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