The ‘power’ struggle continues

DIE HARD III

Herman Tiu Laurel

6/8/2012

Several power struggles are going on. A minor one among the ruling elite just saw the victimized Chief Justice (CJ) yield to the unjust persecution. The other is the power struggle between those upholding the principle of the Rule of Law and the self-serving abusers of that very law among those in power.

Last Tuesday, several crusaders for the Rule of Law went to the Supreme Court (SC) to demand action on the pending petitions before it on the jurisdictional violations that were prejudicial to the CJ's case as well as to damn all the institutions involved in the travesty of due process in the impeachment exercise.

Today, as you read this, another "power" struggle is being waged by advocates of the Filipino power consumers' cause at a hearing of the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) on the 2013 Maximum Average Price (MAP) petition by the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) for its distribution charge, which would again raise electricity rates in the coming years. This is just one among a gamut of issues, including the Meralco-National Power Corp. (Napocor) P14-billion settlement predictably granted by the Rizal Regional Trial Court (RTC) as a pass-on cost to consumers, which we will have to put a stop to. But let us first cut through all the crap.

First, the 2013 MAP deliberations are premature since the 2012 MAP hearings still have unresolved issues as raised by Mang Naro Lualhati (our octogenarian hero of the first P30-billion Meralco refund, along with Cefie Padua and others), as well as the 500-percent overpricing of transformers and other costs of Meralco approved by the ERC, as charged by Iligan Light and Power Inc. (ILPI) against the power distributor before the Court of Appeals.

In view of the fact that the ERC just gave its provisional green light for Meralco to implement its 2012 MAP, why on earth is it now hearing the MAP petition for 2013 without first resolving any of the important prejudicial questions?

Lualhati issued this warning (through text): "Ka Mentong, ERC refuses to exclude the P46,015-billion asset base bloating. This means P48-billion overcharge in 2015. They will approve a charge of P2.50 to P3.50 per kWh, instead of P0.90 per kWh, in 2013 as they have done in 2012…"

Today's hearing will have lawyer Bono Adaza volunteering his legal expertise, in support of Butch Junia, who will be the lead advocate. Several citizen volunteers are also joining, including Lito Villanueva, Boyet Ancheta, and others who texted but didn't give their names. Needless to say, we would always need volunteers to show one and all that we are vigilant — especially a certain lady justice of the SC who was appointed by the current Palace occupant.

Justice Lourdes Sereno, one of those suspected to be shortlisted by BS Aquino III as the next CJ, in an SC decision favoring Meralco, had the gall to fault us consumer volunteers for "not being vigilant" against the power giant's rate increase maneuvers when we had already devoted much of our own time and resources to continuously oppose such abuses — as against the ERC's grant of a P2.2-billion "regulatory liaison budget" for Meralco, at the expense of power consumers, even when the power company merely requested approval for P2.02 billion (or P180 million less).

What "regulatory liaison" means is beyond anybody's understanding; but it would lead one to believe that it forms part of Meralco's needs in "dealing" with the ERC. Just what the hell is this for? Could it be what is sometimes called an "intermediation" cost? And why would the ERC be so generous as to increase this on its own? Is this where the two dozen-strong, highly paid Meralco legal team gets its fees?

In contrast, poor consumer protection advocates simply dig into their own pockets and take time out from their work to put in hours upon hours of research and attendance in hearings in order to stop the power fleecing.

Then, we have the P14-billion settlement agreement. For those still not in the know, it concerns the contract obligations to purchase a certain amount of electricity from Napocor that Meralco reneged on when it set up its own independent power producers (IPPs) to purchase power from these sister firms. Yet, despite losing the case, Meralco has repeatedly petitioned to pass on this penalty to its customers.

Luckily for consumer groups, this was one of the issues that former Solicitor-General Jose Anselmo Cadiz fought hard against. But, as we now know, a few months after Cadiz's sudden and inexplicable resignation in February, the decision of the Rizal RTC came out, leaving it to the ERC to decide whether the P14-billion penalty will be shouldered by Meralco's customers.

Surprisingly, the replacement for Cadiz was SolGen Francis Jardeleza, who was formerly a general counsel to a major conglomerate that's now among the owners of Meralco. Is it any wonder why consumers lost the case under this new SolGen?

And, given the ERC's unbroken record of favoring Meralco, will its decision on the huge pass-on financial obligation be much of a surprise?

Fortunately, Jojo Borja of ILPI called us with some good news: engineer David Tauli, former senior vice president of Cepalco (Cagayan Electric Power and Light Co.), is now joining the crusade against the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (Epira) — the mother of all these power evils.

Frustrated with the results of the Epira and the years of energy woes Mindanao has faced because of it, particularly the crises of the last two years which peaked in the first quarter of 2012 when the whole of Mindanao was literally up in arms against the lies of Manila's power authorities (e.g., Sen. Serge Osmeña and Energy Chief Rene Almendras), Tauli has become one of those very vocal about such suspicious power crises.

We would thus have to rouse more people like him into action as we continue on in this fight.

(Tune in to 1098AM, dwAD, Sulo ng Pilipino/Radyo OpinYon, Monday-Wednesday-Friday [change of sched], 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 Power Struggle Continues" with Jojo Borja and Butch Junia; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)

After the big show

DIE HARD III

Herman Tiu Laurel

6/4/2012

The people, especially the younger generations, should be taught how their minds are being shaped by staged cathartic events, such as the five-and-a-half-month-long impeachment and conviction of Supreme Court (SC) Chief Justice Renato Corona.

From all angles, the just concluded drama is no different from Edsa I or Edsa II, where powerful forces behind the scenes — through their manipulation of key political, economic and media factors — produced, directed and marketed a crisis large enough to create a particular state-of-mind in the public. In Edsa I (circa 1986), after years of demonizing Ferdinand Marcos, coupled with that staged election computer operators' walkout, the Yellows laid the basis for military mutiny and the mobilization of Catholic-led middle class mass actions — the same script that was followed in Edsa II with the impeachment prosecutors' walkout.

It is fairly clear that, for such moves to have been a success, these elite forces have had to repeatedly appeal to the mass ego with such myths as "a return of democracy" in Edsa I, or of it being our "Handog sa Mundo" ("Gift to the World"), or even an Edsa II utopian hope for an "end to corruption" — all of which were never realized.

Undeniably, this formula has been replicated by the global power elite through their social engineers all over the world, in such cases as the "Arab Spring" as well as the "Right-to-Protect" campaign in Libya. Both were produced with trained and funded in-country NGOs and "civil society" groups which opened the way for "regime change."

In Egypt, the Sunni-based Muslim Brotherhood that came to power has called for military intervention by the US and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) into non-Sunni Syria, which will obviously lead to an encirclement of Iran.

In Libya, with the way the country is now disintegrating, the objective was to deconstruct the nation-building infrastructure of Muammar Kadhafi and lay that nation to waste.

In a post-Gloria Arroyo Philippines, the design is for the US to continually prop up a totally dependent and dependable puppet regime that will exercise authoritarian power to push vital US interests, such as a Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) "substate" and a restoration of US military bases throughout the archipelago. Of course, an important goal is to ensure a re-colonization of the economy through transnational corporations and the local oligarchy, unhampered by any obstacles. This is most probably the reason for the push for a pliant judiciary that will, for instance, acquiesce to the billions being sought by a feudal family as just compensation for the land that is to be returned to the farmers.

The impact of the cathartic Corona impeachment on another generation of Filipinos is clear. My GNN program guest Christine Conti, UP student regent and law student who was part of an impeachment monitoring initiative, believes the exercise of convicting Corona was good despite her misgivings about the many violations of law by the prosecution, Malacañang, and the Senate court.

The contradiction (hence, invalidation) in her conflicting views is pretty clear: A law student now justifies the violation of the Rule of Law by the "new standard of transparency" supposedly established for public officers. Question is, would that still hold after most senators and BS Aquino III himself finally decline to sign the waivers to their bank accounts?

In addition, despite Conti's fiery conviction that Mrs. Arroyo is "unforgivably corrupt" and that the country was run aground after Edsa II, she still justifies her generation's pride for the Edsa II coup as if it were "the defining moment for (her) generation," inasmuch as Edsa I was supposedly the Philippines' "Handog sa Mundo." Hopefully, she will soon get to see such contradictions.

All told, the participation of mainstream media in the mind manipulation vs CJ Corona has been blatant. They have gone all out to sustain the "legality" of his conviction, with a case in point being the powerful front-page story about a lowly court interpreter being sacked for not declaring one small asset, which was intended for the public to draw a parallel between the small fry and Corona. The only problem is, the former court employee was sanctioned not for the non-declaration but for double compensation.

This outright misinformation and disinformation are part of what is called "manufacturing consent" for the illegal removal of Corona. Anyone desiring to study the mind control techniques of the powerful, especially of establishment media, can watch two documentaries entitled, "A Century of Self" about Edward Bernays (nephew of Sigmund Freud and the father of modern propaganda, marketing and advertising) and "Manufacturing Consent" by Noam Chomsky, both available on the Web.

Meanwhile, the propagandists of BS Aquino III did not spare any means to prop up their "feel good" campaign after the Corona conviction. To lull the masses into an unthinking stupor, they tried to create a positive economic mood via the National Economic Development Authority (Neda)'s announcement of a "surprising" economic growth rate that "surpasses (the) Asian growth average of 3.7 percent" (even better than Singapore!), as well as other headlines that proclaim, "investors hail Corona conviction." Even the American Chamber of Commerce through its local gofer got into the act at the last minute with its "strategic analysis" of how inevitable and good the conviction is. But as Ado Paglinawan in the US e-mailed us, "the verdict on Corona came toward the end of May (that) it perked the economic growth during the first quarter (January to March)??? Ano ito, hook shot?"

Interestingly, those prevaricators will not highlight the fact that the first quarter saw surveys reporting increases in unemployment (with adult unemployment at a record high of 34.4 percent and with 13 percent jobs lost), as well as hunger at a record high of 23.8 percent of families (with families that rated themselves poor also rising to 55 percent). As such, we can expect Neda and mainstream media to announce a hushed "recalibrating" of data a month from now.

After the big show, reality seeps back in.

(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.; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)

Clowns and scammers

DIE HARD III

Herman Tiu Laurel

6/1/2012

The very day that the Senate impeachment hearings were to conclude, the BS Aquino III government also tried to conclude its own P80 billion loan for the Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management (Psalm) Corp.'s continued operations, thus ensuring that the agency will be able to privatize the remaining 10 percent or so of the National Power Corp. (Napocor)'s assets and the supply of coal and other fuel requirements of independent power producers (IPPs).

Simultaneous to that, an agreement between BS Aquino III and a foreign finance company, Macquarie Group Ltd. of Australia, was reached to create the Philippine Investment Alliance for Infrastructure (PInAI, like Pinay for Aussies) that will set up an infrastructure fund, whereby the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) will contribute $300 million and the Australian firm $50 million for so-called public-private partnership (PPP) projects.

Going by the foreign financial agent's negligible contribution, the inexplicable thing is, why would anyone even go for such a tie-up, especially when the Philippines has its own Special Deposit Account (SDA) in the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) worth around P1.7 trillion, or 12 times the amount of the P130 billion needed to fund the projects this year?

On the afternoon of the impeachment trial's convoluted conclusion — which this space has unwaveringly predicted would end in conviction — and with the senator-judges hamming it up before the cameras, I compiled and later read out on my radio program the more important issues, foremost of which is the country's debt service. In April of this year alone, our country had already paid out P38.6 billion on principal and P16 billion in interest, or a total drain of around P55 billion.

But more than that, government even has a $2.5-billion borrowing program for the year despite the fact we have P1.7 trillion lying idle in the BSP and foreign reserves of up to $72 billion — as against a debt of $60 billion.

Sadly, the swindles don't end there. The news that a certain bigwig invited foreign partners for financial investments into its MRT project — when it is an established fact that the MRT does not lose money on its operations but only on its financial guarantees to foreign investors — also makes our blood boil.

While it is true that the P5.7 million reportedly spent by the House for the impeachment trial is a measly amount, if we consider what other possible expenses it has meant owing to what the Palace has had to promise congressmen, senators, and other interested parties in exchange for a guilty verdict, we'll also be counting in the tens of billions of pesos.

Aside from the usual pork barrel, what and how much more would it have cost, for example, for the last-minute trip of BS Aquino III to the Iglesia ni Cristo (INC) in obtaining the latter's acquiescence to a Corona conviction? Despite Malacañang's pronouncements, the timing of the visit renders its denials laughable. BS Aquino III was certainly in a desperate situation. In order to avoid becoming a lame duck after the ill-conceived impeachment case, he was most probably forced to pay through his nose with the people's resources.

I must admit that I didn't listen to the coverage of the final day of the Corona impeachment as I just couldn't stand the hypocrisy of the kettles and pots pointing fingers and judging others. I did have one hard laugh though from the day before, when the prosecution let out Speaker Sonny Belmonte to close its case. The hard laugh was, of course, triggered by the comedic irony of the chief culprit in what former party-list Rep. Rene Magtubo told of the bribery of congressmen for the passage of the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (Epira) in 2001.

Moreover, columnist Rod Kapunan texted about Belmonte's alleged role in one apparent Edsa I scam, which we Googled and found in veteran writer Larry Henares' 80s column. It concerns "a real estate property at 212 Stockton Street, on the corner of Geary Street, at San Francisco's famed Union Square, known as the Philippine Airlines Building since 1947… (which) had always been a Filipino corner in a square that a San Francisco newspaper once described as 'an island of sunshine and greenery'… considered one of the very best locations in the whole United States." When Edsa took place, the new dispensation "hurriedly and in near secrecy sold the property for $10 million, in other words, at the original purchase price, without recovering the substantial investments made further in the property…"

The column then recounted the Senate blue ribbon committee investigation that ensued, which told of "an intriguing tale… (where) everyone (was) passing the buck and pointing to someone else… (and where) Speedy Gonzalez (claimed that he)… turned the whole matter over to Sonny Belmonte when the latter was appointed GSIS president," with the current Speaker being the one "who made the final decision in April 1986 on whom to sell and at what price."

According to the records, the Philippine government only got $2,000 of what was valued by an "independent, third-party appraiser, Haley-Leslie Appraisal Co. of San Francisco… in a thorough study (of) the market value of the property at the time of purchase on August 1982 (as) $12 million." The appraisal report was even more explicit in that "the property under consideration (was) clearly a prime property." Now why don't we ever encounter such reports in the Philippine Star?

Lastly, from one House Speaker to another, we have this final point: Those who thought Sen. Manny Villar and his group would vote for an acquittal were fooling themselves all along. With the string of cases possibly awaiting him, Villar was likely among the most ready to convict. Indeed, whether seasoned or neophyte, whether young or old, what clowns and scammers these members of the political ruling class are!

(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 Corona conviction: Politics or rule of law?" with Atty. Alan Paguia; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)