Thus, said Party-list Rep. Neri Colmenares of Bayan Muna, even as he urged the consumers to launch a People’s Initiative to repeal the Oil Deregulation Act because it has already caused so much price increases in oil products and has not served its purpose of lowering its cost.
“This will be a parallel initiative to congressional action on bills filed by Bayan Muna and the progressive block in Congress to repeal the oil-deregulation law,” said Colmenares.
The militant legislator said actions within and outside Congress could help push for the eventual repeal of the law that has allowed spiraling fuel prices in the country.
Colmenares said that an “initiative” is the power of the people to propose amendments to the Constitution or to propose and enact legislations through a petition of 10 percent of the registered voters.
“The people have to gather about 4 million signatures in the petition to force the Comelec [Commission on Elections] to conduct a referendum. Once majority of the voters voted in favor of the petition in that referendum, the Oil Deregulation Act is repealed. The oil companies have to apply with the government’s energy regulatory body for every price increase. This will allow consumers to scrutinize the basis for the increase and oppose unjust increases,” Colmenares said.
He said announcing oil-price hikes should no longer be allowed without the consumers’ knowing whether the increase has basis.
“Oil prices affects public interest and must be regulated,” he said.
The progressive bloc in the House of Representatives are urging the holding of a People’s Initiative in consonance with its online campaign in micro-blogging Twitter account BMvsOPH in response to the growing clamor against the continuing oil-price increases in the country and in finding ways to stop it.
Earlier, proadministration legislators urged oil companies to immediately dramatically reduce prices of petroleum products, and warned them against exploiting the decrease of crude price in the world market.
At the same time, Liberal Party Rep. Ben Evardone of Eastern Samar said the Department of Energy (DOE) should be more forceful in dispensing with its power to compel the oil companies to adjust their prices to conform with world oil prices.
“Light sweet crude this morning [Tuesday] is just $77 per barrel but local diesel is still P44, [the price] when the world crude was $99. The huge gap between the price of crude and prices of local petroleum products is an insult and a big injustice to the Filipino people,” said Evardone.
“We cannot allow these oil companies to exploit the low price of oil in the world market to the detriment of consumers. How come these oil companies are very quick to increase their prices every time prices of crude increase?” he added.
Evardone’s party-mate, Rep. Winston Castelo of Quezon City, also expressed dismay over the refusal of local oil firms to roll back prices.
“While they raise their petroleum prices at the slightest indication of an increase in the world market, domestic oil firms have been very slow to roll back their prices when world oil prices decline steadily,” Castelo said.
