WHILE it is true that Regina Paz L. Lopez may feel zealous about protecting the environment, she was not suitable as head of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR). Hence, her short-lived foray into government service was an unfortunate one.
It was unfortunate because I honestly believe that her unwavering passion for environment protection could have had positive effects on an industry that has been unfairly demonized.
It was unfortunate, too, because the one who appointed her was not man enough to say she is simply not fit for the job. Like Pontius Pilate, President Duterte is washing his hands off the Commission on Appointment’s (CA) rejection of Gina as DENR chief. Worse, he virtually accuses his allies, without providing an iota of evidence, of being party to a well-funded lobby against his appointee.
But what is most unfortunate is that Gina’s supporters (and they are many) believe that “greedy oligarchs” had a hand on the rebuff of their idol, conveniently forgetting that the family that brought her up is a member of that community.
Gina is unable to break free from the saber-rattling ways of her eco-warrior days, and this ultimately did her in. While her heart is genuinely for the preservation of the environment, she fails to grasp the enormity of the job, which calls for the masterful balancing of the industry’s interest and that of the environment, which must be nurtured for the common good.
Gina fails to appreciate that the government, under the law and our constitution, is responsible—as a policy—to develop the mining industry. One of her functions as regulator is to observe due process to misbehaving mining contractors; and, if so warranted, mete out the maximum sanctions permissible under their respective contracts.
We don’t just shut down the operations of the tobacco industry just because smoking causes cancer. Similarly, the gas, car, cement, lumber and other industries that are found to be contributory to environment degradation must be allowed to thrive for as long as our modern existence relies on them. The job of the regulator is to see to it that no abuse takes place, and that the environment, through sustainable approaches, is cared for and brought back to the pink of health, after it has been mined out.
This has been done in other countries through hard-nosed regulations and vigilance from governments. It could certainly be done here without killing, as the saying goes, the goose that lays the golden eggs.
Gina should have ceased to be an eco-warrior, and began acting as a regulator. By failing to evolve, she didn’t make the grade.
By adopting a hostile attitude toward the industry that she was tasked to oversee, she struck out. She should have worked on unifying various stakeholder—the indigenous people, the government and the industry—through consultations. Instead, she acted arbitrarily and on personal whim, beyond the ambit of the law, causing further dissonance, resulting in the loss of livelihood to thousands of people who rely on mining, and possibly billions of pesos in unpaid taxes for our country.
What is noteworthy is the so-called oligarchs’ lobby, which is now being postulated by antimining advocates as the main cause of Gina’s CA rejection.
Lobbying is no stranger to the Lopez family. Remember the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (Epira) law? On June 8, 2001, then-President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo signed into law Republic Act 9136, or the Epira of 2001. It was the finale of more than seven years of public hearings and floor discussions on numerous versions of the measures in Congress. Among others, the Epira law is intended to bring down the cost of electricity and expand the delivery of power supply to end-users by motivating competition and efficacy in the electricity industry. The spirit of these reforms is to empower stakeholders, most especially us consumers.
The initial drafts of the Epira law, called Omnibus Power Bill, had countless foreign consultants zealous to unpackage the power sector with no cross ownership among them. But powerful lobbyists, led by the Lopez family through the series of changes in Energy Committee Chairmen in the Senate and Congress from 1995 to 2001, prevailed. In the final bill, only cross-ownership between the transmission company and the others was prohibited.
Section 45 provided that “to promote true market competition and prevent harmful monopoly and market power abuse, the ERC [Energy Regulatory Commission] shall enforce the following safeguards…[b]…. For the purpose of preventing market power abuse between associated firms engaged in generation and distribution, no distribution utility shall be allowed to source from bilateral power-supply contracts more than 50 percent of its total demand from associated firm engaged in generation”.
According to unimpeachable sources, in the finalization of the Epira law in the second week of June 2001, an intense clash erupted on the issue of cross-ownership between those battling to protect the consumers and Lopez lobbyists who were trying to water down the law.
Clearly, the Epira law is mindful of the consequence of a market power abuse between sister firms engaged in generation and distribution. The rest is, as the cliché goes, history, with the Lopezes emerging victorious. Did lobby money back then change hands? Your guess is as good as mine.
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My heartfelt felicitations to my good friend, deputy governor of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) Nestor “Nesting” Espenilla Jr., for his appointment as the new BSP chief. Taking over the mantle from Amando M. Tetangco Jr. is a gargantuan task. As I have written in my previous columns, I believe in Nesting’s capability, both as an economist and a regulator. The hard work is about to begin, but I have no doubt that our nation’s coffers are in good hands. God bless you, Nesting!
For comments and suggestions, e-mail me at mvala.v@gmail.com