BACKBENCHER
Rod P. Kapunan
3/3-4/2012
The most unusual thing that transpired in that latest circus of politicians who still entertain the thought of cashing in on that swindle was the presence of deposed President Joseph “Erap” Estrada. Many believe he has completely lost his sense of political history, forgetting he was a victim of Edsa not only once, but twice! In Edsa I, he was removed as mayor of San Juan, and his mandate was not at all respected by the new overlords. As he narrated, it was then Major Panfilo “Ping” Lacson who told him to vacate, if not they will be forced to drag him out.
He tried to put up an indignation rally for the shabby treatment he got. He joined the march of that maligned “holdouts” of Marcos loyalists. Estrada, together with his followers, were savagely beaten up for defying the order not to march by the government that just proclaimed to the Filipino people their liberation from the “dictatorship.” It was his defiance to be on the side of the underdog that made a destiny out of a municipal mayor. The people — not only of San Juan — loved him for that. Instantly he became a national figure.
Nobody then dared to be identified as a Marcos loyalist because they thought it would amount to committing political hara-kiri. Charismatic Estrada, after losing his post, then started to aim for a higher political office, although people could sense he avoided being identified as a Marcos loyalist. Nothing was wrong with that for in fact people admired him for trying to build his own identity and political mass base over that simmering discontent of people who realized that Edsa was all but a political swindle.
Estrada then began his “long march” to define his political history. In 1987, he ran for senator under the hastily organized Grand Alliance for Democracy, and only he and Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile won. It was his election as senator that firmed up his ambition of wanting to become President, but clever enough, refusing to be identified as a loyalist, although the Marcoses were openly campaigning for him. In 1992, he ran for vice president with business tycoon Eduardo “Danding” Cojuangco, Jr. as his presidential candidate. He won with a sizeable number of votes, but his presidential running mate failing to make it despite the all-out support from their traditional bailiwick, Iglesia ni Cristo.
Estrada had no reason to fear the yellow horde despite being treated like political lepers. The overwhelming votes he obtained when he ran for vice president were more than enough to convey the ominous message that he would be the next President. It was from that grim prospect of the Yellow Era about to come to an abrupt end with a closeted Marcos loyalists wresting power that the conspiracy of hatching another Edsa came about.
One of the notorious plotters that engineered his ouster was there. It was Ramos, who even scolded him publicly when he was President, who worked out that hideous strategy; that should they fail in dissuading the people to vote for him, they could well proceed to discredit him by fabricating charges of corruption, incompetence, and for wallowing deep in vices. Once the black propaganda reached their saturation point, the people would have no choice but to go along with the idea of kicking out the President they overwhelmingly elected.
Indeed, another of that dark chapter in our political history came, and it focused on how the President elected by more than 50 percent of the voters was unceremoniously removed from office. The hypocrites succeeded, but not without seeing Estrada’s followers going berserk. Had it not for the now jailed political hijacker’s determination to hold on to power, the May 1 bloody rampage could have evolved to one of widespread riots. Yes, he was jailed and convicted by a Kangaroo Court, but people did not mind that. He remained popular because he represented their galvanized sentiment, thinking he had that unwavering principle worthy of their blind adulation.
Maybe a man could lose everything, but not his honor. When he too loses that, then we could readily conclude he has become a real goner. Many regretted seeing him making that chikahan at people instrumental for his ouster. There are many things Estrada could do to ingratiate himself with the present regime, but of all things he could have excused his presence for that would imply he has been reduced to a mindless sycophant. His presence was not only an insult to himself, but an exposition that indeed he has lost his sense of political history. He made a trash of his own record at a time when he is about to pull down the curtain to his erstwhile colorful political career.
It was not only a case of him forgetting the people who sacrificed for him, but of distorting Edsa itself. Everybody knew he was not there when the first political swindle happened. But when he showed up in that last celebration, he completely distorted history all for his desire to be included as a party that threw filth at the Filipino people. He cannot term is presence a mere chika-chika, but a betrayal of himself, and an ultimate act of political self-destruction.
Saturday, March 3, 2012
Friday, March 2, 2012
RP’s $500M to IMF: Cruel joke
DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
3/2/2012
I do not know why the usual government financial managers and “experts” went out on a limb to attempt the latest PR stunt for the Philippines’ financial status, but it is so lame that they are certain to get rotten eggs and tomatoes on their faces.
Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) deputy chief Diwa Guinigundo said the country’s contribution of $500 million to the New Arrangement to Borrow (NAB) program of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) signals its “creditor” status in the world. Cory Aquino Finance Chief Jess Estanislao, meanwhile, chimed in with his paeans, leading a yellow daily to blare, “From butt of jokes in 1986, Philippines has risen to creditor nation, says ex-finance chief.” All these, when the truth is, the national government (NG) will only be borrowing by way of issuing bonds to raise the dollars to “contribute” its regular quota to the IMF — as it had done in the past.
With help from financial forensics expert Hiro Vaswani, we have gathered several instances where the BSP and the NG went about raising the country’s contributions to the IMF. From January 2006 (“NG to issue bonds to BSP for advances of IMF dues”), there was this idea of issuing the same type of zero-coupon bonds as the infamous CodeNGO PeaceBonds which will no longer pass through the national budget and go straight to government’s debt to form part of our “automatic debt service.” In 2009, with the budget deficit incurred at that time but which the NG repaid in subsequent years to the BSP, another development (“BSP advances P9B IMF quota payments”) highlighted the country’s regular ritual of raising contributions for the IMF. There is thus no reason to expect that there will be any difference in the process this year.
The Freedom from Debt Coalition (FDC), in its reaction to the BSP and NG’s trumpeting of another $251-million RP contribution to the IMF’s Financial Transaction Plan (FTP), said in its press release, “The news suggesting that ‘the Philippines has now become a creditor nation’ may sound good, but (FDC) smells something fishy about this ‘hype’… Ricardo Reyes, FDC president, said that while such move ‘seems to suggest that the Philippines has gotten out of its debt problem, which of course is not true,’ considering the outstanding national government debt of P4.93 trillion ($120 billion) at present, the catch lies in the next part of the BSP announcement… (where the) ‘BSP lends a part of our dollar reserves to IMF’s FTP’ so the Philippines can borrow again and borrow more from the IMF!” This contribution to the FTP is again no different from our contribution to the NAB of $500 million.
So let’s throw rotten tomatoes and eggs, and add the rotten balut for PeNoy’s head, for this shamefully lame attempt to glorify the Philippines’ borrowed financial tribute to the IMF. This is nothing but a desperate effort to put an artificial sheen to the 26 years of Edsa I’s financial “reforms,” consisting of liberalization of currency and capital flows, deregulation and privatization of the financial system and economy, among others, which have caused the Philippines to become a shameful laggard in the region.
Believe me: The Philippines has now been overtaken by Vietnam, which 26 years ago had just begun to rebuild form the ravages of 50 years of war with France and then the US. Tonette Chan of the Inquirer, who wrote that report on Estanislao, even dared to ask, “Who is having the last laugh now?” It’s certainly not us Filipinos.
But their hubris doesn’t come in short supply. Estanislao was, in fact, quoted to have said before the Institute for Solidarity in Asia that “The Philippines is going to be a model of good governance in the world,” arguing that “public officials and citizens (who) address local issues like instituting political reforms and changing the political culture… would help the Philippines overtake Thailand and Indonesia in terms of economic growth.”
Given the dismal 26 years of Edsa I financial and economic reforms that Jess Estanislao started and bequeathed to a long list of Finance heirs, from “Boy Blue” del Rosario, Jose Cuisia, Bobby de Ocampo, Lito Camacho, to the latest, Cesar Purisima, how the hell can our country even dream of “overtaking” Thailand and Indonesia, when these countries were well behind the Philippines 26 years ago?
Ah, but the financial milieu imposed by Edsa I was all but a banker’s heaven, erected on Cory Aquino’s pledge to “honor all debts,” which turned our people over to the money masters and the “debt trap,” and dismantled our financial and economic floodgates to effect the massive transfer of public assets to foreign and local corporatists, all financed by “sovereign guarantees,” leading to the emaciation of our nation-state to the shadow of a captive creature that it is today.
As a recent commentary from the Economist’s View (“The Nation-State Reborn” by Dani Rodrik) tells us, the restoration of any nation to greatness would require its people to “turn for solutions to their national governments, which remain the best hope for collective action” because even as the “nation-state may be a relic… (of) the French Revolution… it is all that we have.” For us, that only means a truly sovereign nation-state borne of a new Philippine Revolution; not one that’s captive to corporate powers.
(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 “Alan Paguia’s crusades;” visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
Herman Tiu Laurel
3/2/2012
I do not know why the usual government financial managers and “experts” went out on a limb to attempt the latest PR stunt for the Philippines’ financial status, but it is so lame that they are certain to get rotten eggs and tomatoes on their faces.
Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) deputy chief Diwa Guinigundo said the country’s contribution of $500 million to the New Arrangement to Borrow (NAB) program of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) signals its “creditor” status in the world. Cory Aquino Finance Chief Jess Estanislao, meanwhile, chimed in with his paeans, leading a yellow daily to blare, “From butt of jokes in 1986, Philippines has risen to creditor nation, says ex-finance chief.” All these, when the truth is, the national government (NG) will only be borrowing by way of issuing bonds to raise the dollars to “contribute” its regular quota to the IMF — as it had done in the past.
With help from financial forensics expert Hiro Vaswani, we have gathered several instances where the BSP and the NG went about raising the country’s contributions to the IMF. From January 2006 (“NG to issue bonds to BSP for advances of IMF dues”), there was this idea of issuing the same type of zero-coupon bonds as the infamous CodeNGO PeaceBonds which will no longer pass through the national budget and go straight to government’s debt to form part of our “automatic debt service.” In 2009, with the budget deficit incurred at that time but which the NG repaid in subsequent years to the BSP, another development (“BSP advances P9B IMF quota payments”) highlighted the country’s regular ritual of raising contributions for the IMF. There is thus no reason to expect that there will be any difference in the process this year.
The Freedom from Debt Coalition (FDC), in its reaction to the BSP and NG’s trumpeting of another $251-million RP contribution to the IMF’s Financial Transaction Plan (FTP), said in its press release, “The news suggesting that ‘the Philippines has now become a creditor nation’ may sound good, but (FDC) smells something fishy about this ‘hype’… Ricardo Reyes, FDC president, said that while such move ‘seems to suggest that the Philippines has gotten out of its debt problem, which of course is not true,’ considering the outstanding national government debt of P4.93 trillion ($120 billion) at present, the catch lies in the next part of the BSP announcement… (where the) ‘BSP lends a part of our dollar reserves to IMF’s FTP’ so the Philippines can borrow again and borrow more from the IMF!” This contribution to the FTP is again no different from our contribution to the NAB of $500 million.
So let’s throw rotten tomatoes and eggs, and add the rotten balut for PeNoy’s head, for this shamefully lame attempt to glorify the Philippines’ borrowed financial tribute to the IMF. This is nothing but a desperate effort to put an artificial sheen to the 26 years of Edsa I’s financial “reforms,” consisting of liberalization of currency and capital flows, deregulation and privatization of the financial system and economy, among others, which have caused the Philippines to become a shameful laggard in the region.
Believe me: The Philippines has now been overtaken by Vietnam, which 26 years ago had just begun to rebuild form the ravages of 50 years of war with France and then the US. Tonette Chan of the Inquirer, who wrote that report on Estanislao, even dared to ask, “Who is having the last laugh now?” It’s certainly not us Filipinos.
But their hubris doesn’t come in short supply. Estanislao was, in fact, quoted to have said before the Institute for Solidarity in Asia that “The Philippines is going to be a model of good governance in the world,” arguing that “public officials and citizens (who) address local issues like instituting political reforms and changing the political culture… would help the Philippines overtake Thailand and Indonesia in terms of economic growth.”
Given the dismal 26 years of Edsa I financial and economic reforms that Jess Estanislao started and bequeathed to a long list of Finance heirs, from “Boy Blue” del Rosario, Jose Cuisia, Bobby de Ocampo, Lito Camacho, to the latest, Cesar Purisima, how the hell can our country even dream of “overtaking” Thailand and Indonesia, when these countries were well behind the Philippines 26 years ago?
Ah, but the financial milieu imposed by Edsa I was all but a banker’s heaven, erected on Cory Aquino’s pledge to “honor all debts,” which turned our people over to the money masters and the “debt trap,” and dismantled our financial and economic floodgates to effect the massive transfer of public assets to foreign and local corporatists, all financed by “sovereign guarantees,” leading to the emaciation of our nation-state to the shadow of a captive creature that it is today.
As a recent commentary from the Economist’s View (“The Nation-State Reborn” by Dani Rodrik) tells us, the restoration of any nation to greatness would require its people to “turn for solutions to their national governments, which remain the best hope for collective action” because even as the “nation-state may be a relic… (of) the French Revolution… it is all that we have.” For us, that only means a truly sovereign nation-state borne of a new Philippine Revolution; not one that’s captive to corporate powers.
(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 “Alan Paguia’s crusades;” visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
Monday, February 27, 2012
IPPs owe public $9.99-B
DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
2/27/2012
Much as this space would like to tackle the myriad of other issues bedeviling the nation, we are constantly dragged back to the electricity or power plunder that continues to ravage this country to this day. We have repeatedly highlighted the anomalous fact of the Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management (Psalm) Corp. and National Power Corp. (Napocor) debt staying at $18 billion despite over 10 years and almost 90 percent of the state’s power assets being “sold off” to the private sector since the start of the power privatization program under the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (Epira) of 2001. It is as if money from the sales vanished into thin air.
Last week, one clue was given by the state agency that manages these assets. When its top honcho, Emmanuel Ledesma Jr., said, “Psalm is yet to collect $9.99 billion in additional proceeds from the transfer of IPP (independent power producer) contracts to private administrators as of September 2011,” what it says is that taxpayers and power consumers are to be charged what the IPPs should have paid for but didn’t.
As for the other half of that $18-billion debt, Ledesma claims it as “$8.44 billion in debts assumed from” Napocor. Now wasn’t the privatization of Napocor assets supposed to cover all these? Where did proceeds from the sale of diesel-fired to hydroelectric and geothermal power plants go? How about the latest $4-billion privatization of the TransCo (the erstwhile state-owned transmission grid) to the private sector operator, National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP), that has also not been collected after two years?
In June 2011, it was reported that “government may use the receivables from the concession contract of the NGCP” on the pretext that “selling the receivables ahead of the scheduled payment of NGCP may help in the efforts to reduce the universal charge (UC).”
Wait a minute: TransCo was earning P18 billion a year when it was sold off; now it’s not even paid while the NGCP is already earning; hence, we now even have to rediscount or sanla the receivables? What name can you give to such a deal if not “historic swindle?”
I am just aghast at the magnitude of this scam and the impunity with which it continues to be perpetrated before the eyes of 95 million Filipinos. With the silent blessings of four Edsa administrations (Cory Aquino, Fidel Ramos, Gloria Arroyo, and now PeNoy), this national swindle rages on because of the silent consent of the entire Senate and Lower House of Congress, in collaboration with all government electricity agencies--from Psalm to the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC).
What is the power behind these power plunderers that all government institutions are cowed into compliance, even as we ordinary folk see their dictates as an unconscionable swindle?
What are we, the people of this nation, to do when our supposed representatives in government stand idly by as our pockets are looted and our economy is systematically laid to waste by the garrote of high electricity prices and a progressively failing economy over years and years of power plunder?
The latest statements of the Psalm chief only reveal how helpless government authorities really are in the face of the IPPs and power plunderer-privateers. Instead of pressing for these companies to pay up what are clearly debt obligations to government and the Filipino people, our supposed leaders continue to find ways on how to unburden these companies--to the detriment of the public.
With deceitful intent, Psalm has been trying to pass on these debts of the privateers via piecemeal transfers: P140 billion to be paid from the national budget and assumed by taxpayers; P0.39 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) as UC, shouldered again by power consumers over 20 years; with another bulk to be charged to Malampaya’s earnings; and only God knows what else.
If they were to pass these on as one lump sum to each electricity bill, it would amount to an additional P5/kWh over 20 years, which means up to 35 percent of added cost to each power consumer, who will fork out over P100 billion in power payments annually.
Congress has not approved such piecemeal schemes just yet because the ploy is too blatantly oppressive and dishonest; but it has done nothing to resolve the power plunder for the nation’s welfare either.
Malacañang, for its part, has only played deaf and dumb to the issue and the pleas of all sectors of society. At the rate the situation is developing, it is apparent that government has been made inutile, with the implication being that, at some point, all these debts will finally be transferred to us when we are at our most vulnerable--perhaps under another “revolutionary government” dictatorship a la Cory--so that the IPPs and power plunderers will never be made to pay the $18 billion anymore, thanks to Edsa I, Edsa II, and PeNoy.
Meanwhile, the power crisis in Mindanao is growing unabated despite an overabundance of capacity from hydroelectric dams that were deliberately sabotaged. The NGCP now projects an average shortfall there of 179 megawatts (MW) next month and a high 345 MW in April, even when just one facility, the Agus-Pulangi hydroelectric complex, already has 727 MW of installed capacity—this despite its production of only 467 MW today due to seemingly deliberate maintenance deficiencies.
Two Napocor power barges, 117 and 118, privatized to Aboitiz’ Therma Marine Corp. can, as well, generate 200 MW; but the rates are so high that the 33 Mindanao electric cooperatives refuse to buy from them.
Four power barges of Psalm, 101 to 104, lying idle in Luzon are being asked by the Mindanao Business Council to be deployed there to provide emergency power. But this cannot be done allegedly because it would violate the Epira’s ban on government from participating in power generation, even if it is just to help the people. How twisted, indeed, have our country’s laws become? Yet some twisted minds still have reason to celebrate Edsa?
(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
2/27/2012
Much as this space would like to tackle the myriad of other issues bedeviling the nation, we are constantly dragged back to the electricity or power plunder that continues to ravage this country to this day. We have repeatedly highlighted the anomalous fact of the Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management (Psalm) Corp. and National Power Corp. (Napocor) debt staying at $18 billion despite over 10 years and almost 90 percent of the state’s power assets being “sold off” to the private sector since the start of the power privatization program under the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (Epira) of 2001. It is as if money from the sales vanished into thin air.
Last week, one clue was given by the state agency that manages these assets. When its top honcho, Emmanuel Ledesma Jr., said, “Psalm is yet to collect $9.99 billion in additional proceeds from the transfer of IPP (independent power producer) contracts to private administrators as of September 2011,” what it says is that taxpayers and power consumers are to be charged what the IPPs should have paid for but didn’t.
As for the other half of that $18-billion debt, Ledesma claims it as “$8.44 billion in debts assumed from” Napocor. Now wasn’t the privatization of Napocor assets supposed to cover all these? Where did proceeds from the sale of diesel-fired to hydroelectric and geothermal power plants go? How about the latest $4-billion privatization of the TransCo (the erstwhile state-owned transmission grid) to the private sector operator, National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP), that has also not been collected after two years?
In June 2011, it was reported that “government may use the receivables from the concession contract of the NGCP” on the pretext that “selling the receivables ahead of the scheduled payment of NGCP may help in the efforts to reduce the universal charge (UC).”
Wait a minute: TransCo was earning P18 billion a year when it was sold off; now it’s not even paid while the NGCP is already earning; hence, we now even have to rediscount or sanla the receivables? What name can you give to such a deal if not “historic swindle?”
I am just aghast at the magnitude of this scam and the impunity with which it continues to be perpetrated before the eyes of 95 million Filipinos. With the silent blessings of four Edsa administrations (Cory Aquino, Fidel Ramos, Gloria Arroyo, and now PeNoy), this national swindle rages on because of the silent consent of the entire Senate and Lower House of Congress, in collaboration with all government electricity agencies--from Psalm to the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC).
What is the power behind these power plunderers that all government institutions are cowed into compliance, even as we ordinary folk see their dictates as an unconscionable swindle?
What are we, the people of this nation, to do when our supposed representatives in government stand idly by as our pockets are looted and our economy is systematically laid to waste by the garrote of high electricity prices and a progressively failing economy over years and years of power plunder?
The latest statements of the Psalm chief only reveal how helpless government authorities really are in the face of the IPPs and power plunderer-privateers. Instead of pressing for these companies to pay up what are clearly debt obligations to government and the Filipino people, our supposed leaders continue to find ways on how to unburden these companies--to the detriment of the public.
With deceitful intent, Psalm has been trying to pass on these debts of the privateers via piecemeal transfers: P140 billion to be paid from the national budget and assumed by taxpayers; P0.39 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) as UC, shouldered again by power consumers over 20 years; with another bulk to be charged to Malampaya’s earnings; and only God knows what else.
If they were to pass these on as one lump sum to each electricity bill, it would amount to an additional P5/kWh over 20 years, which means up to 35 percent of added cost to each power consumer, who will fork out over P100 billion in power payments annually.
Congress has not approved such piecemeal schemes just yet because the ploy is too blatantly oppressive and dishonest; but it has done nothing to resolve the power plunder for the nation’s welfare either.
Malacañang, for its part, has only played deaf and dumb to the issue and the pleas of all sectors of society. At the rate the situation is developing, it is apparent that government has been made inutile, with the implication being that, at some point, all these debts will finally be transferred to us when we are at our most vulnerable--perhaps under another “revolutionary government” dictatorship a la Cory--so that the IPPs and power plunderers will never be made to pay the $18 billion anymore, thanks to Edsa I, Edsa II, and PeNoy.
Meanwhile, the power crisis in Mindanao is growing unabated despite an overabundance of capacity from hydroelectric dams that were deliberately sabotaged. The NGCP now projects an average shortfall there of 179 megawatts (MW) next month and a high 345 MW in April, even when just one facility, the Agus-Pulangi hydroelectric complex, already has 727 MW of installed capacity—this despite its production of only 467 MW today due to seemingly deliberate maintenance deficiencies.
Two Napocor power barges, 117 and 118, privatized to Aboitiz’ Therma Marine Corp. can, as well, generate 200 MW; but the rates are so high that the 33 Mindanao electric cooperatives refuse to buy from them.
Four power barges of Psalm, 101 to 104, lying idle in Luzon are being asked by the Mindanao Business Council to be deployed there to provide emergency power. But this cannot be done allegedly because it would violate the Epira’s ban on government from participating in power generation, even if it is just to help the people. How twisted, indeed, have our country’s laws become? Yet some twisted minds still have reason to celebrate Edsa?
(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)
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