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We’re
talking about electric power, and in the current
brouhaha over high electricity rates, we’re seeing more
heat generated than light, and that’s probably what’s
bound to happen when the political wattage is turned up
well beyond its rated capacity.
President Arroyo ignited the first sparks of the
controversy when she told a gathering of businessmen she
had been bothered to no end why power costs in the Luzon
urban beltway should be so high when Luzon relies on
imported oil for only 1 percent of its power. She asked
why Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) seems to be charging
higher rates than power-distribution firms in Cebu and
Davao, and then exhorted the assembled entrepreneurs to
help her bring high power rates down.
After
the presidential harangue, Government Service Insurance
System (GSIS) president Winston Garcia further turned up
the heat on the Lopez family-owned Meralco, accusing it
of lack of transparency and withholding vital
information from him when, according to him, as a member
of the board of the power-utility firm, he should at
least be accorded this courtesy since GSIS, along with
several other government institutions, owns a third of
Meralco stockholdings.
But
Garcia’s attempt to pin down Meralco as solely
responsible for jacking up power rates to prohibitive
levels apparently doesn’t sit well with other people.
There’s Senate Minority Leader Nene Pimentel Jr., who
says the coming congressional inquiry into soaring power
rates should include a review of what Congress can do to
effect reforms in the National Power Corp. (Napocor)
since the state-owned power-generation firm “holds the
key to the government’s plea to bring down exorbitant
electricity costs being borne by consumers.”
Sen.
Francis Escudero doesn’t buy the line, either, that
Meralco should be publicly lynched for stealthily
padding our monthly electric bills. He suggests instead
that the government scrap the imposition of value-added
tax (VAT) on systems loss incurred by power-distribution
firms, which he described as a “tax on theft.” The VAT
on systems loss, he pointed out, is one of the primary
reasons for the country’s skyrocketing power cost, and
that there’s no provision in the VAT law that this
should be imposed.
Makati
Mayor Jejomar Binay, on the other hand, sees it in
another light, saying there’s apparently a “squeeze
play” being applied against the Lopez family and Meralco
by Malacañang to shift the blame on them for the Arroyo
administration’s obvious failure to effect the necessary
reforms in the power sector and keep the cost of
electricity down. Come to think of it, that view may not
be off the mark.
Right in
Mrs. Arroyo’s camp, in fact, there’s a dissenting voice
in the current effort to pin the blame for high power
rates solely on Meralco. Albay Gov. Joey Salceda, one of
the President’s chief economic advisers, said he has
suggested to Mrs. Arroyo to “seriously consider” a
general review of the contracts with independent power
producers as part of her strategy to seek lower power-
rates. The President responded positively, he said.
We’ll
probably see by the end of this month how the “squeeze
play” that Binay describes will eventually turn out.
That’s because May 27 is the annual Meralco
stockholders’ meeting. If the GSIS-led government
stockholders in the power- distribution firm manage to
convince the small stockholders to side with them, then
a government takeover of Meralco is possible. But can we
be sure our lights and our appliances will keep running
without any interruption once Napocor people start
running the show?
Global
warming threat is real
Environment Secretary Lito Atienza showed up for a
breakfast chat with a group of journalists in Quezon
City yesterday with his left hand bandaged, the result,
he said, of a bad fall in the terrace of a hotel in
Boracay after arriving from an international
environmental conference in Singapore.
Almost
as soon as he sat down, however, he said the most
important environmental problem the country now faces is
global warming, which is the result of the continuing
degradation of the natural environment. And then he
delivered the shocker: Of the top 10 countries most
vulnerable to the catastrophic effects of global
warming—massive flooding, destructive cyclones and so
on—the No. 1, he said, is the Philippines, because we
sit on the equator in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
The
ironic thing, he pointed out, is that developing
countries such as the Philippines contribute only a very
small percentage of the total greenhouse-gas emissions
blamed for global warming. The toxic emissions come
mostly from advanced industrialized countries such as
the United States, which has stubbornly refused to sign
the Kyoto Protocol and wants to go on with its merry
ways while the rest of the planet dies a slow death from
pollution and other environmental hazards. I had been
skeptical of a politician being given the helm of an
important government department such as the Department
of Environment and Natural Resources, but it’s hard not
to be impressed with Atienza’s ardent passion for
environmental protection after less than a year on the
job.
E-mail: ernhil@yahoo.com |
