Disconnect DIE HARD III Herman Tiu Laurel 10/10/2011

Disconnect

DIE HARD III

Herman Tiu Laurel

10/10/2011
While we are not going to look up the medical name for the malady of the disconnection between one’s brain and motor functions anymore, lest we be accused again of casting psychiatric aspersions, we can see many of its symptoms in government.

Of course, the Aquino III government did right by ordering the National Food Authority (NFA) “to buy storm-damaged palay to help the deluged farmers of Northern and Central Luzon. At least four million people were displaced by the winds and floods of two successive typhoons, and a season’s crop was soaked black. Flood waters have not receded in many areas and a very bleak Christmas awaits many of the stricken families. The order to salvage what can be saved of these soaked palays can only be done with the NFA ready to intervene in the market.

Yet, as Aquino III is ordering the state agency to perform its “Good Samaritan” act, two of his top honchos in Budget and Finance — namely, Butch Abad and Cesar Purisima — are doggedly hammering the abolition and privatization of the NFA.

For one, a fully privatized grains sector will not have any inclination to do public service in times of crisis. What is most likely is that it will wait for desperate typhoon and flood victims to plead for their soaked palays to be bought as animal feed as it hoards good rice stocks in order to raise prices.

If Aquino III were without the NFA today, who could he possibly have relied on to assist these unfortunate millions of rice farmers? This is the lesson he should pick up from the unfortunate disasters that have struck us the past two weeks. This is the very argument he should use to silence Abad and Purisima as this comes from wiser and far more experienced and dedicated voices, such as the NFA leaders and employees’ union, and even his own appointed administrator who has since become a defender of the NFA’s vital role in our economy.

So why are Abad and Purisima carrying on with their campaign by dishing out lies against the NFA, distorting its actual financial condition in order to project an utterly hopeless and corrupt image of it?
A fully privatized food, rice, and grains sector will mean the loss of our national food sovereignty and security, as the power over food supplies will be transferred completely to profit-seeking local and transnational traders.

Without food sovereignty and security, the nation will be enslaved to private parties who control its very means of survival and, consequently, compel it to give and do anything in exchange.

Abad and Purisima’s track record betrays clear servility to foreign interests, from pushing the IMF-WB’s Electric Power Industry Reform Act (Epira) to the maintenance of the debt-based financial system despite the overflowing funds lying idle in the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.

Elsewhere, there’s another disconnect: The Meralco (Manila Electric Co.) rate hike for October of P0.09 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) at a time when global fuel prices are going down, amid a surplus of hydro-power that should be evident with the hydro-electric dams overflowing.

The oil and natural gas-fueled independent power producers (IPPs) have indexed prices that defy the laws of supply and demand in the world, which apply only to the Philippines.

The official reason for the increase in rates, Meralco says, is that “the generation charge component, which it collects for its power suppliers, will rise by 14.19 centavos per kWh, but this hike will be partly offset by a 5-centavo decrease in the distributor’s own charges, resulting in a lower net increase…” Well, this is just a lie, in complicity with the Energy Regulatory Commission, as Meralco’s Maximum Average Price should not be P1.58 but P0.90/kWh.

Further, it says, “the increase in the generation charge is due to the use of more expensive liquid fuel by First Gen Corp.’s natural gas plants, following a supply restriction at Malampaya natural gas field from Sept. 22 to 25.” This is, of course, another BS.

Why should there be a supply restriction from Malampaya’s cheaper natural gas plant when we all know that it even exports a great part of its production?

Filipino power consumers should have the priority in the use of Malampaya natural gas; and this explanation from Meralco, which is tied to the Malampaya gas by sweetheart supply contracts from the Lopez era, does not go far enough into details to justify the hike.

Malacañang, in the wake of Meralco’s announcement and knowing how sensitive the issue already is, quickly follows up by saying that November power prices will see a decline, as if to show some concern.
But if it is really concerned, what Malacañang should do is to dig deeper into the present Meralco claims to find out the truth while compelling the power company to hold off its rate hike after a thorough hearing on its claims.

Meanwhile, the Code-NGO PEACe Bonds of P10 billion will be paid on Oct. 18 with P35 billion of the taxpayers’ money. The loan’s first beneficiaries were the conspirators of the Edsa II coup d’etat — the Ayala foundation, the Ateneo, NGOs associated with the Caucus of Development NGOs (Code-NGO), the Camacho siblings (one of whom is Gloria Arroyo’s former Finance Secretary), and some others.

This was plunder of the highest degree by people associated with Cory Aquino, from Dan Songco (who managed Cory’s NGOs) to Dinky Soliman et al. The funds from this transaction replaced former foreign funding that was substantially withdrawn from the Philippines when the US shifted its soft intensity conflict projects to other parts of the globe, leaving a few hundred NGO workers now making up another kind of NGO or Neo-Governmental Organizations as the subversive backbone against the Republic. This parallel bureaucracy (as seen in the Conditional Cash Transfer network) is intended to replace career civil service workers, with Aquino III as the president of this parallel network. Another major disconnect, indeed.

(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino/Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m. on 1098AM; Talk News TV with HTL, Saturday, 8:15 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8 on “Occupy Wall Street: Lessons for RP”; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)

(Reprinted with permission from Mr. Herman Tiu-Laurel)


Source:  The Daily Tribune

URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20111010com5.html