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
