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It is
well that our colleague on this page, the hard-working
Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez, has assured one and
all, including his provincemate, Iloilo provincial board
member Arthur Defensor Jr., that there will be no
selective prosecution of Manila Electric Co. (Meralco)
officials in connection with the multibillion-peso
syndicated estafa case filed against the power utility
by the self-proclaimed consumer group National
Association of Electricity Consumers for Reforms (Nasecore).
That
advisory should now allay the concerns of some quarters
that the Department of Justice (DOJ) may be misusing its
prosecutorial powers in going after Meralco and its
officials in the wake of the months-old, high-profile
takeover bid mounted by Government Service Insurance
System (GSIS) president Winston Garcia and his cohorts
on the nation’s largest power-distribution outfit.
Those
fears linger in the wake of reports that besides GSIS,
other government financial institutions, including the
Social Security System (SSS), are busily buying Meralco
shares to the point of using Chicago-style solicitation
tactics.
Earlier,
Defensor, who used to sit on the Meralco board, and his
colleagues—including, among others, SGV founder
Washington SyCip, Meralco chairman and CEO Manuel Lopez,
former Prime Minister Cesar E. A. Virata, former
Commission on Elections chairman Christian Monsod,
former Department of Energy secretary Francisco Viray
and former Far East Bank president O. V. Espiritu—run
the risk of being arrested after Gonzalez approved the
recommendation of a Justice panel finding probable cause
against the utility firm for failure to reimburse
billions of pesos allegedly illegally collected from its
consumers over a number of years.
“As long
as I am Secretary of Justice,” Gonzalez intoned, “there
will be no selective prosecution. Each litigant will
have his share of attention and we will apply the law
before we condemn.”
Which is
precisely what is expected of him and his colleagues,
especially since some observers have noted that the good
secretary appeared to have unduly favored Nasecore from
the very start of this anti-Meralco workout by waving
the mandatory filing fee of P8 million and allowing the
exclusion of other government-appointed board members
from the suit.
But we
will take Gonzalez’s assurances, as well as those aired
by other Malacañang functionaries, that Ilagan’s
“crusade” does not have any official imprimatur and that
the vast powers of the government and its
instrumentalities will not be used to muzzle its
perceived political enemies and critics—in this case,
the Lopezes—if only to restrain others from using this
case as another proof of the alleged vindictiveness or
its high-handedness toward less than malleable investors
or business groups. Sana na nga (We hope so).
By the
way, has anybody looked into the background of Nasecore
and Mr. Ilagan, if only to reassure consumers and the
public that it is what it claims it is and that it is a
kind of pauper litigant deserving of the DOJ’s
magnanimity?
Other
‘selective’ acts
Speaking
of selective acts, I am amazed at the seeming exuberance
of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP)
leadership in denouncing via a full-page ad obvious
corruption at the Court of Appeals (CA) even as it
castigated the Supreme Court’s initiative to investigate
the same as “completely reactionary.”
This
rearguard IBP move is not only gratuitous but
delusional, considering that it came weeks after the
whole sordid affair has been in the papers and only
after some quarters denounced the IBP itself for its
silence and its skewed and selective priorities.
They
point to the IBP’s continued silence on the matter of
the aborted government-Moro Islamic Liberation Front
memorandum of agreement on ancestral domain, the
Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement and the
Ombudsman-SP row, among others.
In any
event, now that it has finally said a word against
corruption in the CA, it behooves the IBP to reassess
its situation and insure that it assists in a cleansing
that goes all the way down to the rolls of lawyers, many
of whose practices are contemptuous of the canons of the
law and basic morality.
Perhaps
it can make a model out of its own officers, many of
whom are active practitioners and have themselves been
the subject of rumors and white papers detailing conduct
unbecoming in their own dealings with the very CA it
denounced in that ad.
It could
also advise practitioners to revisit their ways in and
out of the court- rooms, from gift-giving to liaisons
with the Judiciary, or even the writing of contracts,
letters of comfort or demands and day-to-day legal
conduct.
What we
expect the IBP and its officers to do is act in
accordance with their oath and refrain from misusing
their training and their profession in promoting a
highly questionable and contemptuous agenda for
themselves and the nation.
No to
selective hysterics
There’s
no question that the oil companies need to be constantly
advised about their obligations to the consumers and the
general public, especially in an environment of
deregulation. If they want to avoid suspicions of price
gouging and irresponsible behavior, they should take the
initiative to level with the public and not hide behind
the muddling interpretation of the law.
Take the
case of the impact of the continued fall in world crude
prices, which dropped from a high of $116/barrel to
$101/barrel in just a matter of days.
Of
course, the consuming public expected the companies to
start rolling back prices in a matter of days. They
should not wait for threats of boycotts or even more
unsavory ways to move them to action.
If, for
some reason, it will take time for them to follow the
market, as it were, they should take the cue and explain
the situation instantaneously and not wait for the
government or the public to raise the issues. They
should invite the public to discuss with them and their
auditors the pricing structures and practices in the
industry worldwide, the better to let them appreciate
the complexities of the oil and power sectors.
That
kind of openness will strip our friends in the transport
sector and others skeptical of the practices of the
industry the foundation for their usual hysterics.
It is
only by way of informed and proper appreciation of the
facts that hysterics gets thrown out of the public
debate. That is true for the oil and power companies,
and even more so in the case of public governance. It is
possible that the heightened national tension and the
unfortunate rampage and the killings which visited North
Cotabato, Lanao del Norte, Maguindanao and some other
parts of Southern Philippines could have been avoided
had hysterics borne out of undue secrecy, misinformation
and misguided actions not infected the on-and-off
contentious negotiations.
That
kind of openness would have also cut the extremist
hysterics on both sides of the divide and the
interventionist tendencies of other forces in the
years-old secessionist war in the South.
But now
that things are clearing out and the government finally
seems to be putting its foot down on all acts of
lawlessness, it behooves on other sectors to tone down
and avoid, as much as possible, engaging in hysterics
and exaggerated claims to promote their own agenda.
This
kind of selective, if not unwarranted, hysterics should
not be given any kind of space, especially as we
struggle to get our democratic bearings on track. ’Di
ba (Isn’t it)? |
