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By Efren L. Danaom Senior
Reporter
The Manila Electric Co. (Meralco)
is home to “criminal” rings and should be blasted away, Sen.
Miriam Defensor Santiago charged on Thursday.
“There is a conglomeration of
syndicates at Meralco. It is time that the Department of Justice
make an example of Meralco! I am certain that there are criminal
elements in Meralco,” she said at a press conference at the
Senate.
Santiago blamed these
“syndicates” for the failure of the seven-year-old Electric
Power Industry Reform Act to lower power rates.
“They are not only raising
power rates. They are also buying power from their own independent
power producers, an act inimical to public interest,” she said.
The senator added that Meralco is
buying electric wires, posts, electric meters, and other materials
from its own company.
The Joint Congressional Power
Commission, or PowerCom, headed by Santiago and Pampanga Rep. Juan
Miguel “Mikey” Arroyo will investigate the high rates being
charged by Meralco on Monday. Chairman Winston Garcia of the
Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) and Meralco officials
have been invited to the hearing.
“The government has already
lowered the sale price by Napocor [National Power Corp.] to Meralco
and yet Meralco has not lowered its own selling price to retail
consumers. Why is there a disharmony between the process of
generating power and bringing it to the consumer?” Santiago asked.
She described the Monday inquiry
as a “battle of titans” with Garcia and Meralco officials in
attendance. Santiago stressed that PowerCom is not concerned with
supposed attempts to wrest control of Meralco from the Lopezes.
“Meralco is like the Bureau of
Customs [in that] whoever takes over, the syndicates will still make
a killing because they are already well entrenched,” she said.
According to Santiago, the ideal
Meralco manager is a street-smart executive and a graft-buster, not
a desk-bound officer.
Sen. Rodolfo Biazon also on
Thursday said Meralco should give the financial papers requested by
GSIS but opposed any state control of the private power firm.
Santiago earlier proposed that the utility be placed in government
hands.
Biazon described the request of
GSIS for the documents as reasonable and Meralco should give them
“in the spirit of transparency.”
“GSIS is a major stockholder of
Meralco and it is the right of stockholders to know how their
company is being managed,” he said.
Biazon, however, warned that the
utility would suffer losses should government try to wrest control
of the company through the shares owned by GSIS and proxy votes.
Inept appointees
“Incompetent political
appointees cannot run Meralco. The government does not have a good
track record in running a corporation,” he said.
Biazon cited the National Power
Corp. as an example of a poorly managed government corporation.
“The Napocor is existing only
because it is getting subsidies from the national government,” he
said.
Rep. Matias Defensor, the
chairman of the House Committee on Justice, also on Thursday said it
is time for the government to take over Meralco again. He cited lack
of transparency in the utility, the country’s biggest power
distributor.
Malacañang also on Thursday said
it will continue to ask Meralco to open its books so that consumers
may know how they are being charged.
Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye
said there is no need to remove value-added tax on power and lower
royalties being imposed on power generation because the public only
wants to know how Meralco bills them.
Defensor said the easiest way to
get Meralco back from the Lopezes is to buy them out or for the
government to buy more shares.
At present, 32 percent of Meralco
is private, and 32 percent is government, particularly the
investment made by GSIS.
Under the Consitution, Defensor
said, the government can take over Meralco. He pointed to Section
17, Article XII: “In times of national emergency, when the public
interest so requires, the State may, during the emergency and under
reasonable terms prescribed by it, temporarily take over or direct
the operation of any privately owned public utility or business
affected with public interest.”
Retirement package
The takeover is a ploy for
ensuring a retirement package for Malacañang “cronies,” the
political opposition charged also on Thursday.
“The government says all it
wants to do is to lower electricity rates. It sounds good but the
chilling question is where will the takeover spree end?” asked
Adel Tamano, the spokesman of the United Opposition.
If the government “takes over
Meralco, justifying it by lowering prices, why not take over oil
companies to lower gas prices or food companies to lower prices of
basic goods as well? Pretty soon everything is going to be run and
controlled by this administration,” Tamano said in a statement.
Jomar Canlas and Angelo S.
Samonte
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