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)
Monday, February 20, 2012
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)
Saturday, February 18, 2012
The national plundering goes on
DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
2/17/2012
It is a news item that gets little notice as it does not relate to the impeachment hearings. But if the government and media were truly alert, they would have spotted it right from the get-go.
The claimed “uprating” of the Agus VI hydroelectric plant in Mindanao, to be undertaken by the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), is geared toward increasing the facility’s “output to augment limited supply on the island.” This was the official announcement from Josefina Patricia Asirit, undersecretary of the Department of Energy (DoE), who said that the “uprating… needs to be presented to the Neda (National Economic Development Authority) Board.”
Simply put, uprating means Agus VI will soon be able to produce 62 megawatts (MW) from its present 50. The question is: Why only now when it could have been done much earlier?
They, of course, allege that Mindanao is short of power today. And with the scheduled brownouts causing massive economic displacement in the island, this has been turned into another reason for the private sector to be given new independent power producer (IPP) contracts that will double Mindanao’s generation cost.
The Agus VI uprating confirms our charge these past decades that authorities delayed rehabilitation deliberately to create an opportunity for electricity plunder. It confirms the conspiracy led by multilateral financial institutions in tandem with the Philippine oligarchy and its corrupt political class.
We have time and again seen through these conspirators’ modus operandi: Create power shortages; announce actions (though delayed) to justify government expenditure for “rush jobs;” then announce the privatization of a particular facility once its rehabilitation is completed and its systems are fully operational.
In this instance, the pressure for the privatization of the entire Agus-Pulangui hydroelectric complex has been on for years now. Only opposition from many crusading Mindanao power sector NGOs, civic leaders, and political leaders, such as Rep. Rufus Rodriguez, has stopped them so far. Sooner or later, though, the multinationals and multilaterals will descend upon Malacañang to get their way.
It is therefore important to keep refreshing the historical memory of our people about the pressure exerted by, say, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) through its dangling of a $300 million standby loan on our politicians in 2001 to pass the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (Epira), a law that caused, among other things, the onerous and devastating privatization of power, the creation of the administrative and corrupt monster that is the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC), as well as its Satanic offspring, the Performance Based Regulation, which pushed the country’s power rates to become “the highest in Asia,” if not the world.
For the swift enactment of that law, which allegedly cost P500,000 per congressman plus millions in electricity projects, Gloria Arroyo back then was hailed by the foreign chambers of commerce, the Makati Business Club, and other oligarchs. It is not surprising then that these very same people are now showing all their love for PeNoy for providing the impeachment distraction as their power plunder continues.
As Agus and Pulangui supply the vast majority of hydro power in Mindanao, the same report last Monday also stated that the DoE is similarly pushing the dredging by government of the Lanao River that supplies water to Pulangui VI. Our question again is: Why only now?
Mindanaoans have demanded the dredging of these facilities years ago. But, as no action was taken, the power crisis started allowing the DoE, Psalm (Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp.), and the NGCP (National Grid Corp. of the Philippines) to issue ”red alert” bulletins of power shortages to justify their call for more privatization and new emergency projects (e.g., power plants and transmission connections).
The caveat is, every time new projects are approved, new capex (capital expenditure) requirements are submitted, which are added to the power bills consumers pay for.
When will Congress and Malacañang do something about this — only after a genuine political revolution sweeps these corrupt ruling classes away?
On another related note, we have this item on the “wholesale savings” being stored with the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas for 4.25 percent interest and used as a tool for managing the country’s money and currency, called the Special Deposit Account (SDA): It has already grown to P1.721 trillion the past month. UP Economics professor Ben Diokno explains: “(The high level of funds in SDAs) indicated still weak demand for loans, suggesting lack of investment opportunities or banks still careful in extending loans… SDAs are short-term while PPP (Public-Private Partnership) financing requirements are extremely long-term…”
Really? But why do I see strong demand for loans from coconut and dairy, as well as other small manufacturing import-substitution sectors? Ah, but these are genuine industries that are not encouraged by the present economic planners.
Financial forensics expert Hiro Vaswani even contends that what this fund shows is that we are indeed a relatively rich nation. The only fly in the ointment is that lowering the rates and releasing it could create havoc due to the fact that we have no strong State that sets its own economic goals by directing the huge fund for our own productive developmental investments.
Reflecting further on Vaswani’s analysis, it dawned on me that the PPP program is but a concession to global capital, which, in fine, involves highly financially leveraged “rentier” projects (just like apartments and market stalls that are built and rented out to the public) with government guarantees that are not directly productive.
Although these may support some productivity in agriculture and industry, the fees and rates are just too high, making such an exploitative set-up work against productivity in the long run.
Taking note of the impact of such high toll and harbor fees, not to mention the high cost of energy projects being entered into, the PPP may very well stand for “Private Plunder Projects.”
(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 “The evils of corporate mining behemoths;” visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
Herman Tiu Laurel
2/17/2012
It is a news item that gets little notice as it does not relate to the impeachment hearings. But if the government and media were truly alert, they would have spotted it right from the get-go.
The claimed “uprating” of the Agus VI hydroelectric plant in Mindanao, to be undertaken by the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), is geared toward increasing the facility’s “output to augment limited supply on the island.” This was the official announcement from Josefina Patricia Asirit, undersecretary of the Department of Energy (DoE), who said that the “uprating… needs to be presented to the Neda (National Economic Development Authority) Board.”
Simply put, uprating means Agus VI will soon be able to produce 62 megawatts (MW) from its present 50. The question is: Why only now when it could have been done much earlier?
They, of course, allege that Mindanao is short of power today. And with the scheduled brownouts causing massive economic displacement in the island, this has been turned into another reason for the private sector to be given new independent power producer (IPP) contracts that will double Mindanao’s generation cost.
The Agus VI uprating confirms our charge these past decades that authorities delayed rehabilitation deliberately to create an opportunity for electricity plunder. It confirms the conspiracy led by multilateral financial institutions in tandem with the Philippine oligarchy and its corrupt political class.
We have time and again seen through these conspirators’ modus operandi: Create power shortages; announce actions (though delayed) to justify government expenditure for “rush jobs;” then announce the privatization of a particular facility once its rehabilitation is completed and its systems are fully operational.
In this instance, the pressure for the privatization of the entire Agus-Pulangui hydroelectric complex has been on for years now. Only opposition from many crusading Mindanao power sector NGOs, civic leaders, and political leaders, such as Rep. Rufus Rodriguez, has stopped them so far. Sooner or later, though, the multinationals and multilaterals will descend upon Malacañang to get their way.
It is therefore important to keep refreshing the historical memory of our people about the pressure exerted by, say, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) through its dangling of a $300 million standby loan on our politicians in 2001 to pass the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (Epira), a law that caused, among other things, the onerous and devastating privatization of power, the creation of the administrative and corrupt monster that is the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC), as well as its Satanic offspring, the Performance Based Regulation, which pushed the country’s power rates to become “the highest in Asia,” if not the world.
For the swift enactment of that law, which allegedly cost P500,000 per congressman plus millions in electricity projects, Gloria Arroyo back then was hailed by the foreign chambers of commerce, the Makati Business Club, and other oligarchs. It is not surprising then that these very same people are now showing all their love for PeNoy for providing the impeachment distraction as their power plunder continues.
As Agus and Pulangui supply the vast majority of hydro power in Mindanao, the same report last Monday also stated that the DoE is similarly pushing the dredging by government of the Lanao River that supplies water to Pulangui VI. Our question again is: Why only now?
Mindanaoans have demanded the dredging of these facilities years ago. But, as no action was taken, the power crisis started allowing the DoE, Psalm (Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp.), and the NGCP (National Grid Corp. of the Philippines) to issue ”red alert” bulletins of power shortages to justify their call for more privatization and new emergency projects (e.g., power plants and transmission connections).
The caveat is, every time new projects are approved, new capex (capital expenditure) requirements are submitted, which are added to the power bills consumers pay for.
When will Congress and Malacañang do something about this — only after a genuine political revolution sweeps these corrupt ruling classes away?
On another related note, we have this item on the “wholesale savings” being stored with the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas for 4.25 percent interest and used as a tool for managing the country’s money and currency, called the Special Deposit Account (SDA): It has already grown to P1.721 trillion the past month. UP Economics professor Ben Diokno explains: “(The high level of funds in SDAs) indicated still weak demand for loans, suggesting lack of investment opportunities or banks still careful in extending loans… SDAs are short-term while PPP (Public-Private Partnership) financing requirements are extremely long-term…”
Really? But why do I see strong demand for loans from coconut and dairy, as well as other small manufacturing import-substitution sectors? Ah, but these are genuine industries that are not encouraged by the present economic planners.
Financial forensics expert Hiro Vaswani even contends that what this fund shows is that we are indeed a relatively rich nation. The only fly in the ointment is that lowering the rates and releasing it could create havoc due to the fact that we have no strong State that sets its own economic goals by directing the huge fund for our own productive developmental investments.
Reflecting further on Vaswani’s analysis, it dawned on me that the PPP program is but a concession to global capital, which, in fine, involves highly financially leveraged “rentier” projects (just like apartments and market stalls that are built and rented out to the public) with government guarantees that are not directly productive.
Although these may support some productivity in agriculture and industry, the fees and rates are just too high, making such an exploitative set-up work against productivity in the long run.
Taking note of the impact of such high toll and harbor fees, not to mention the high cost of energy projects being entered into, the PPP may very well stand for “Private Plunder Projects.”
(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 “The evils of corporate mining behemoths;” visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
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