DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
2/24/2012
As I continued my pencil pushing on the power plunder that has raged on for over 10 years--now with a particularly renewed ferocity in Mindanao, I realize that the P80,000 per electricity consumer I computed in my last column speaks only half the story.
The Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management (Psalm) Corp. debt today stands at $18 billion (P800 billion), despite 10 years of privatizing National Power Corp. (Napocor) assets by almost 90 percent. As it is, authorities are now in a quandary as to how to charge this to us consumers without blowing the lid on the swindle of the century. Their latest attempt, therefore, is to charge 20 percent of this to government, which, of course, means the taxpayers. As for the rest, well, the shysters at Psalm are still working with Congress on passing this on to consumers via a so-called Universal Charge. In short, they will try to make 10 million electricity customers pay for all this by hook or by crook. But that’s not all.
The other half of the story involves the oligarchs who got these $18 billion worth of Napocor assets that we as taxpayers and power consumers paid for since the state power company was established by government in 1936.
What Filipino power consumers have really been plundered of is not only P80,000 per paying customer and, to a lesser extent, per individual taxpayer (as even the consumption of candies, diapers etc. have VAT included). Because we are being made to pay for P80,000 through the various surreptitious means that Psalm is devising with the corrupt bureaucracy, including Malacañang, the Upper and Lower Houses of Congress, the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC), and the judiciary, the oligarchs on the other hand are already enjoying cash flow benefits and profits from collections on power generating assets they have taken over.
Since the private conglomerates now “owning” our erstwhile public assets took them over on credit, based on sovereign guarantees and guaranteed payments from consumers, we are also actually paying for those assets now in list of acquisitions. This is a classic lagaring Hapon on us as each consumer is actually going to pay double the amount at P180,000!
Some of these asset transfers--such as the national transmission grid that used to be under the National Transmission Corp. (TransCo) but now in the hands of the private National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP), which was supposed to have brought in $4 billion for Psalm and the government--have not been paid since their turnover in January 2009.
In fact, we, the taxpayers, have had to foot the bill for Psalm’s operations to the tune of P75 billion to P85 billion each year since the state agency has had to borrow for its operational funds, with the approval of Congress.
You see, we are being cooked in our own fat while the oligarchs are fattening themselves, also on our monthly payments.
And while we are computing and discovering the mounting sums which the oligarchs and their corrupt political agents in government are plundering from the nation’s electricity consumers and taxpayers, Mindanaoans are at present beginning to feel the full force of the power swindle in their area.
“Power curtailment” of four to eight hour-brownouts regularly hit parts of Mindanao today. I have been receiving reports from our colleagues there, particularly Mr. Jojo Borja, early this week that Mindanaoans are now up in arms over the situation since the rains have not stopped and the hydro-electric plants that include the vast Agus-Pulangui complex should already be supplying enough power.
At the same time, Mindanaoans are well aware that there are four emergency power barges with Napocor that can immediately be deployed to supply emergency power there. Yet, the Department of Energy (DoE) and Psalm refuse to do so, as both await the privatization of these barges by March.
Confirming Borja’s report was the appeal aired last Sunday by the Mindanao business community and the island’s 33 electric cooperatives (led by the Association of Mindanao Rural Electric Cooperatives) to look into the region’s power crisis. They say that it is not only due to the reduced capacity of the hydro-electric plants which have not been maintained properly but also because of the “derating” or control of other power plants in Mindanao.
The two power barges privatized to the Aboitizes in 2009 are not generating power because the electric cooperatives (ECs) cannot buy from them through NGCP as the grid’s power rates are not affordable to Mindanao consumers. The ECs, thus, bear the brunt of power consumers’ anger when they pass on the generation charge from Therma Marine Corp., also of the Aboitiz Group.
Meanwhile, Malacañang, the Senate, and the House merely display their grandstanding antics in the Corona impeachment hearings.
When Pampanga Rep. Aurelio Gonzales Jr. came out with a bill against what he calls the negative typecasting of Philippine solons as crooks, I remembered asking: What was the vote of his fellow congressmen on the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (Epira)? Weren’t they reported to have each received a P500,000-payola for the onerous law’s approval, as exposed by Rep. Rene Magtubo in 2001? How about the P10-million National Electrification Administration (NEA) projects per congressman ordered released by Gloria Arroyo to those who voted favorably for the measure?
Another one of Gonzales’ harebrained colleagues, sadly, seconded him, saying there are many “crabs” among the public dragging the reputation of congressmen down out of envy. These legislators should instead look at themselves and see that they are the ones dragging the entire country down with their constant scrambling for huge scraps of pork and other large morsels from the national budget for themselves. We challenge these whining solons to a face-to-face debate anytime, anywhere on who the crabs really are--the public or their ilk--so that they can be put in their proper places.
(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: New proof of cheating?;” visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
Friday, February 24, 2012
Monday, February 20, 2012
The ‘dictatorial wimp’
DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
2/20/2012
We were never confused. We had always known. Now, thanks to BS Aquino III, everyone now knows the naked truth: He is a wimp, and has always been a wimp. As the powers behind the exploitative political-economic establishment wanted to ensure that the Philippines would have a wimp of a president, this was the reason for his becoming the favorite of the elite, who poured in lots of media and money support to achieve this end.
Before long, the wimp was bestowed with power, and he brought in a whole set of wimps to share political power with him. From behind the scenes, the shadows most probably murmured, “What are we in power for?” and “You’ve got 75 percent popularity, don’t squander it,” into his wimpy ears. And soon, another dangerous thought was implanted: “Why not go for it? Uncle Sam’s giving us the chance. The Makati Business Club is behind us when we begin to terrorize the Supreme Court (SC). After that, we conquer all.” Thus, the dictator-wimp was born.
Addressing the colegialas of La Consolacion College, Manila, BS Aquino III lambasted SC Chief Justice (CJ) Renato Corona, and asserted his fearless forecast that the CJ will be convicted. He then lashed out at his critics, saying they are getting confused in their name-calling: “(You say) I’m a spoiled brat, immature. You have so many criticisms against me. In 2010 (you said) I am wimpy, very weak. In 2011, I am a dictator. In 2012, I am now a wimpy dictator…”
Well, have I got news for him: First of all, BS Aquino III, you are the one who is confused. Why, you even have your qualifier and noun reversed. Still, you are a wimp first and foremost, one who thinks he can build a new dictatorship to follow his mother’s revolutionary government. Gladly, few are following and even fewer are scared into submission. But because of that, you’ve gone even deeper into your wimp-ishness in hurling your threats and harangues before an audience of colegialas and not us--the genuine critical media.
You are not just “very weak.” After your antics against the SC, you have become even weaker. You also made yourself so much weaker after saddling the nation with a 3.7-percent Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth in 2011 after your gross mismanagement of the economy.
By the end of 2012, you will most certainly collapse as even your own National Economic Development Authority (Neda) could only make out a 3 percent to 5 percent growth rate for the most critical year of 2012, and in its over wide statistical stretch, reflect a nervous, baseless guesswork, which only betrays a total absence of clear economic plans.
You claim that with Corona in the SC, it would be “extremely difficult, if not impossible,” to pursue reforms. Yet, despite the pressing need for one reform most urgent for the people, the reform in the electricity sector to bring down the “highest power rate in Asia,” it was your appointee to the SC, Justice Ma. Lourdes Sereno, who decided on a crucial consumer petition in favor of the power oligarchs and their captive Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC).
In August of 2011, Sereno was ponente to an SC Second Division decision junking consumer protection groups’ petition for a temporary restraining order (TRO) against the 26.9-centavo Meralco (Manila Electric Co.) rate increase and its overcharge beyond the 12-percent Return-on-Rate Base (RoRB) formula affirmed by the SC in 2003, on the basis of the ERC’s violation of the consumers’ right to due process in refusing consumers opportunity to present their opposition. Though the high court admitted that the ERC “prematurely” issued the assailed decision “since the period for the petitioners to file their comment/opposition had not lapsed then,” Sereno still decided against the consumer groups.
The worst part of it all was when Sereno chastised these groups for supposedly not being “vigilant enough,” despite the fact that they used their own time and resources, in contrast to Meralco, which the ERC allowed to charge consumers its two dozen lawyers at the hearing and its P2.2-billion “regulatory liaison” fund (for what, it was never explained).
Worse, Benigno Aquino III is a wimp in pretending not to see (and definitely not acting on) the electricity and power sector oligarchs’ plundering. As we speak, the power pirates are pushing for the transfer of the IPP (independent power producer) plunder debt from the Power Sector Asset and Liabilities Management (Psalm) Corp. to taxpayers--part of a P140-billion component of the overall $18-billion debt left with Psalm despite 10 years of privatization of almost 90 percent of the National Power Corp. (Napocor)’s assets.
All these debts are supposed to be passed on to power consumers through the so-called Universal Charge, but with power rates already the “highest in Asia,” adding this $18 billion or P800 billion (roughly P80,000 per household--yes, that’s how much the Electric Power Industry Reform Act has cost us each) would make Philippine power rates the highest in the world even if spread out over the next 20 years.
Benigno Aquino III is a wimp for not acting to protect the nation and the people, particularly the nation’s small miners, and stopping global mining mega-corporations from gaining headway in controlling millions of hectares of our nation’s rich mineral deposits. The record of these mega-mining corporations’ destruction of million-hectare pristine areas with their collapsing tailings dams in at least 35 incidents all over the world is a matter of record.
Our water aquifers built up over eons will be poisoned, with threats of massive toxic tailings inundating hundreds of thousands of hectares of agricultural lands, condemning for eternity such areas with mercury and other chemical contamination, and with thousands of Filipino lives put in peril.
The list of BSA III’s wimp-ishness would not fit into this small space. So while his dictatorial tantrums are going out in a whimper fast, the nation should prepare a spanking for this little brat until he learns his lessons.
(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: New proof of cheating?;” visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
Herman Tiu Laurel
2/20/2012
We were never confused. We had always known. Now, thanks to BS Aquino III, everyone now knows the naked truth: He is a wimp, and has always been a wimp. As the powers behind the exploitative political-economic establishment wanted to ensure that the Philippines would have a wimp of a president, this was the reason for his becoming the favorite of the elite, who poured in lots of media and money support to achieve this end.
Before long, the wimp was bestowed with power, and he brought in a whole set of wimps to share political power with him. From behind the scenes, the shadows most probably murmured, “What are we in power for?” and “You’ve got 75 percent popularity, don’t squander it,” into his wimpy ears. And soon, another dangerous thought was implanted: “Why not go for it? Uncle Sam’s giving us the chance. The Makati Business Club is behind us when we begin to terrorize the Supreme Court (SC). After that, we conquer all.” Thus, the dictator-wimp was born.
Addressing the colegialas of La Consolacion College, Manila, BS Aquino III lambasted SC Chief Justice (CJ) Renato Corona, and asserted his fearless forecast that the CJ will be convicted. He then lashed out at his critics, saying they are getting confused in their name-calling: “(You say) I’m a spoiled brat, immature. You have so many criticisms against me. In 2010 (you said) I am wimpy, very weak. In 2011, I am a dictator. In 2012, I am now a wimpy dictator…”
Well, have I got news for him: First of all, BS Aquino III, you are the one who is confused. Why, you even have your qualifier and noun reversed. Still, you are a wimp first and foremost, one who thinks he can build a new dictatorship to follow his mother’s revolutionary government. Gladly, few are following and even fewer are scared into submission. But because of that, you’ve gone even deeper into your wimp-ishness in hurling your threats and harangues before an audience of colegialas and not us--the genuine critical media.
You are not just “very weak.” After your antics against the SC, you have become even weaker. You also made yourself so much weaker after saddling the nation with a 3.7-percent Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth in 2011 after your gross mismanagement of the economy.
By the end of 2012, you will most certainly collapse as even your own National Economic Development Authority (Neda) could only make out a 3 percent to 5 percent growth rate for the most critical year of 2012, and in its over wide statistical stretch, reflect a nervous, baseless guesswork, which only betrays a total absence of clear economic plans.
You claim that with Corona in the SC, it would be “extremely difficult, if not impossible,” to pursue reforms. Yet, despite the pressing need for one reform most urgent for the people, the reform in the electricity sector to bring down the “highest power rate in Asia,” it was your appointee to the SC, Justice Ma. Lourdes Sereno, who decided on a crucial consumer petition in favor of the power oligarchs and their captive Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC).
In August of 2011, Sereno was ponente to an SC Second Division decision junking consumer protection groups’ petition for a temporary restraining order (TRO) against the 26.9-centavo Meralco (Manila Electric Co.) rate increase and its overcharge beyond the 12-percent Return-on-Rate Base (RoRB) formula affirmed by the SC in 2003, on the basis of the ERC’s violation of the consumers’ right to due process in refusing consumers opportunity to present their opposition. Though the high court admitted that the ERC “prematurely” issued the assailed decision “since the period for the petitioners to file their comment/opposition had not lapsed then,” Sereno still decided against the consumer groups.
The worst part of it all was when Sereno chastised these groups for supposedly not being “vigilant enough,” despite the fact that they used their own time and resources, in contrast to Meralco, which the ERC allowed to charge consumers its two dozen lawyers at the hearing and its P2.2-billion “regulatory liaison” fund (for what, it was never explained).
Worse, Benigno Aquino III is a wimp in pretending not to see (and definitely not acting on) the electricity and power sector oligarchs’ plundering. As we speak, the power pirates are pushing for the transfer of the IPP (independent power producer) plunder debt from the Power Sector Asset and Liabilities Management (Psalm) Corp. to taxpayers--part of a P140-billion component of the overall $18-billion debt left with Psalm despite 10 years of privatization of almost 90 percent of the National Power Corp. (Napocor)’s assets.
All these debts are supposed to be passed on to power consumers through the so-called Universal Charge, but with power rates already the “highest in Asia,” adding this $18 billion or P800 billion (roughly P80,000 per household--yes, that’s how much the Electric Power Industry Reform Act has cost us each) would make Philippine power rates the highest in the world even if spread out over the next 20 years.
Benigno Aquino III is a wimp for not acting to protect the nation and the people, particularly the nation’s small miners, and stopping global mining mega-corporations from gaining headway in controlling millions of hectares of our nation’s rich mineral deposits. The record of these mega-mining corporations’ destruction of million-hectare pristine areas with their collapsing tailings dams in at least 35 incidents all over the world is a matter of record.
Our water aquifers built up over eons will be poisoned, with threats of massive toxic tailings inundating hundreds of thousands of hectares of agricultural lands, condemning for eternity such areas with mercury and other chemical contamination, and with thousands of Filipino lives put in peril.
The list of BSA III’s wimp-ishness would not fit into this small space. So while his dictatorial tantrums are going out in a whimper fast, the nation should prepare a spanking for this little brat until he learns his lessons.
(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: New proof of cheating?;” visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Bungled by hypocrisy
BACKBENCHER
Rod P. Kapunan
2/18-19/2012
Hypocrisy has contributed much to bungle the impeachment case against Chief Justice Renato Corona. This is obvious. One could see how President Aquino has been carried away by emotions and misled by his sycophants into singling out Corona. They forget that in their charge against him on the case of Flight Attendants and Stewardess Association of PAL against Philippine Airlines, what happened was a collective act of the justices that concurred to give due course to the third motion for reconsideration that has become final, notwithstanding that it was filed more than twelve years ago.
Logic will tell that they can never grab the neck of Corona without doing the same to his accomplices who made a f*rt at our judicial system. Obviously, the prosecution crafted its complaint to single out Corona, while sanitizing his peers now playing possum in not knowing what happened. In fact, both the prosecution and the defense collaborated to canalize the questioning to avoid mentioning the name of the lawyer who wrote that third motion for reconsideration, notwithstanding that what Corona and his gang in that Division did was a clear violation of the basic canon on judicial ethics.
Had former Solicitor General Estelito Mendoza been an ordinary lawyer, it would have cost him his license. Corruption need not be proven in that case because the action to reverse their final order is beyond doubt indicative of corruption. This I hasten to say, for how many lawyers have been unjustly punished for being persistent or makulit?
Some suspect they purposely did not mention him fearing it might spill over to drag PAL owner Lucio Tan, a name familiar as one of the country’s leading political broker. Doing that could result in the magistrates doing some finger-pointing of who from among their fellow hypocrites colluded in reviving a case that have long decomposed to expose the maggots of immorality and corruption contaminating the system.
The same issue was raised against the defense when they went to the Supreme Court seeking for the issuance of a temporary restraining order to prevent the opening of Chief Justice Corona’s foreign currency deposit. As usual, grandstanding politicians led by Senator Franklin Drilon made their self-serving but discordant argument that the restraining order was violative of the Constitution. The argument of Senator Drilon was way off mark, but he has to play that pesky role as duty, and not to act as a cold and impartial judge in that reformatted “tabernacle for justice.”
To repeat, the contested issue is not about the elevation of the Senate impeachment court as above the Supreme Court, but on the basic issue that nobody is above the law. That reminded me of that unchaffed slogan by one politician which says: “The law applies to all, or none at all.” The issue raised by Drilon and his cabal unfortunately metamorphosed to nonsense when they began citing foreign jurisprudence in support of their wayward arguments.
Knowing Drilon as an ardent apologist of foreign interest groups in this country, he would be eclectic in insisting to examine Corona’s dollar bank account, while allowing foreign banks to keep secret their loot without him violating Corona’s right to invoke the equal protection clause. The hypocrites need to abrogate first that imperialist-dictated law. Even that, it would still not work against Corona because no law is supposed to retroact against one whose act was not yet punishable when he committed it.
From an incredible alibi made by Rep. Reynaldo Umali, who said the bank account record was just handed to him by somebody he did not know and could not identify, to the testimony of that self-righteous congressman by the name of Jorge Banal, who now concocts an even sillier fantasy claiming the documents were tossed inside their compound, the evidence the prosecution relies on most as crucial becomes dimmer than ever.
Even if we are to take it that the Supreme Court did not issue a restraining order to allow the hypocrites to make a travesty on somebody’s bank account, they should have known better, they as people used to pocketing much money, that a demand by a court to release the bank account records of a depositor accused of a crime involving fraud is always certified and duly signed by the manager or authorized bank officer attesting that said account was released upon specific orders of the court.
Without said certification, the issue cannot revolve on the genuineness or validity of the bank account, but on whether it can be presented as legal and valid evidence in court. The exclusionary rule these people are hankering are pure nonsense. The basic rule remains that illegally sourced evidence can never be presented or much more accepted in court. The wily strategy of Drilon to compare the spurious records at hand with the ones kept by the bank is his clever way of skirting the prohibition.
Otherwise, that court becomes a party to a crime. It is psychiatric and mental for somebody to say that the Senate impeachment court is above the law because the theory why they are there is precisely for them to enforce that precept in government that nobody is above the law, or in Latin “nemo est supra legis.”
(rodkap@yahoo.com.ph)
Rod P. Kapunan
2/18-19/2012
Hypocrisy has contributed much to bungle the impeachment case against Chief Justice Renato Corona. This is obvious. One could see how President Aquino has been carried away by emotions and misled by his sycophants into singling out Corona. They forget that in their charge against him on the case of Flight Attendants and Stewardess Association of PAL against Philippine Airlines, what happened was a collective act of the justices that concurred to give due course to the third motion for reconsideration that has become final, notwithstanding that it was filed more than twelve years ago.
Logic will tell that they can never grab the neck of Corona without doing the same to his accomplices who made a f*rt at our judicial system. Obviously, the prosecution crafted its complaint to single out Corona, while sanitizing his peers now playing possum in not knowing what happened. In fact, both the prosecution and the defense collaborated to canalize the questioning to avoid mentioning the name of the lawyer who wrote that third motion for reconsideration, notwithstanding that what Corona and his gang in that Division did was a clear violation of the basic canon on judicial ethics.
Had former Solicitor General Estelito Mendoza been an ordinary lawyer, it would have cost him his license. Corruption need not be proven in that case because the action to reverse their final order is beyond doubt indicative of corruption. This I hasten to say, for how many lawyers have been unjustly punished for being persistent or makulit?
Some suspect they purposely did not mention him fearing it might spill over to drag PAL owner Lucio Tan, a name familiar as one of the country’s leading political broker. Doing that could result in the magistrates doing some finger-pointing of who from among their fellow hypocrites colluded in reviving a case that have long decomposed to expose the maggots of immorality and corruption contaminating the system.
The same issue was raised against the defense when they went to the Supreme Court seeking for the issuance of a temporary restraining order to prevent the opening of Chief Justice Corona’s foreign currency deposit. As usual, grandstanding politicians led by Senator Franklin Drilon made their self-serving but discordant argument that the restraining order was violative of the Constitution. The argument of Senator Drilon was way off mark, but he has to play that pesky role as duty, and not to act as a cold and impartial judge in that reformatted “tabernacle for justice.”
To repeat, the contested issue is not about the elevation of the Senate impeachment court as above the Supreme Court, but on the basic issue that nobody is above the law. That reminded me of that unchaffed slogan by one politician which says: “The law applies to all, or none at all.” The issue raised by Drilon and his cabal unfortunately metamorphosed to nonsense when they began citing foreign jurisprudence in support of their wayward arguments.
Knowing Drilon as an ardent apologist of foreign interest groups in this country, he would be eclectic in insisting to examine Corona’s dollar bank account, while allowing foreign banks to keep secret their loot without him violating Corona’s right to invoke the equal protection clause. The hypocrites need to abrogate first that imperialist-dictated law. Even that, it would still not work against Corona because no law is supposed to retroact against one whose act was not yet punishable when he committed it.
From an incredible alibi made by Rep. Reynaldo Umali, who said the bank account record was just handed to him by somebody he did not know and could not identify, to the testimony of that self-righteous congressman by the name of Jorge Banal, who now concocts an even sillier fantasy claiming the documents were tossed inside their compound, the evidence the prosecution relies on most as crucial becomes dimmer than ever.
Even if we are to take it that the Supreme Court did not issue a restraining order to allow the hypocrites to make a travesty on somebody’s bank account, they should have known better, they as people used to pocketing much money, that a demand by a court to release the bank account records of a depositor accused of a crime involving fraud is always certified and duly signed by the manager or authorized bank officer attesting that said account was released upon specific orders of the court.
Without said certification, the issue cannot revolve on the genuineness or validity of the bank account, but on whether it can be presented as legal and valid evidence in court. The exclusionary rule these people are hankering are pure nonsense. The basic rule remains that illegally sourced evidence can never be presented or much more accepted in court. The wily strategy of Drilon to compare the spurious records at hand with the ones kept by the bank is his clever way of skirting the prohibition.
Otherwise, that court becomes a party to a crime. It is psychiatric and mental for somebody to say that the Senate impeachment court is above the law because the theory why they are there is precisely for them to enforce that precept in government that nobody is above the law, or in Latin “nemo est supra legis.”
(rodkap@yahoo.com.ph)
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