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By Efren L. Danao, Senior
Reporter
The government, not the Lopezes,
is the rightful owner of the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco), Sen.
Juan Ponce Enrile said Tuesday.
Enrile said former President
Corazon Aquino gave Meralco to the Lopezes for free, even if the
government had expanded its franchise and upgraded its facilities.
He maintained that since the Lopez family did not pay the government
anything for getting Meralco, the government could still claim
ownership of the utility firm.
“It is up to the government
whether it wants to get back Meralco,” Enrile said when asked what
should be the next step if the government really still owns the
utility.
He added that Eugenio Lopez and
his brother, former Vice President Fernando Lopez, went to
then-President Ferdinand Marcos in 1973 because Meralco Securities
Co. that they had owned was in precarious condition with about P101
million in principal and interest that was past due.
“That’s why the Lopezes were
hard put in looking for somebody who could bail them out,” Enrile
explained.
He added that the Lopez brothers
had written a letter to Marcos offering to sell Meralco to a
cooperative composed of its employees, end-users and the government.
Enrile, however, could not say how much the Lopezes were paid for
their share, but he cited a P200-million loan secured by the new
owners, Meralco Foundation, from the Development Bank of the
Philippines for payment.
“At the start, the customers
had participation certificates that entitled them to Meralco
dividends. When Cory [ex-President Aquino’s nickname] gave Meralco
to the Lopezes, these certificates were forgotten,” he said.
Sen. Joker Arroyo, the Executive
Secretary during the Aquino administration, said there was no
documentation on the return of Meralco to the Lopezes.
“It was done verbally,”
Senator Arroyo added. He argued that the Lopez family yielded its
ownership of Meralco under duress during the martial-law regime of
Marcos.
Enrile, who held various Cabinet
positions under Marcos, denied that the Lopezes were forced to give
up Meralco. The Lopez family has been claiming that it was forced to
give up the power firm as well as its other companies because the
martial-law regime was holding Eugenio Lopez Jr. hostage.
“That is not true. Geny [Eugenio’s
nickname] Lopez was arrested because he was involved in a plot to
assassinate Marcos after the 1969 elections,” Enrile also claimed.
He said that everything that he
was saying could be found also in a notarized statement of former
Meralco officials Emilio Abello and Senen Gabaldon. Abello and
Gabaldon gave the statement on February 27, 1975 in answer to a
claim of the Lopezes’ lawyer Gerard Hill of San Francisco,
California, that Marcos grabbed Meralco.
He and the other senators
apparently recognized Meralco as still Lopez-owned during the start
of the hearings on Monday on charges against the Lopezes’ alleged
mismanagement of the utility, as shown by its alleged price-gouging.
Sen. Edgardo Angara also on
Tuesday said Meralco should return to consumers through billing
credits what they had been wrongfully charged with.
“For instance, I don’t think
consumers should pay for the power consumption of Meralco offices.
Meralco not only got its power for free [but] it also charged its
consumers for power that they did not use. Meralco should refund
them this,” he added.
Meralco had admitted at the
hearing of the Joint Congressional Power Commission (PowerCom) that
it had been passing on to end-users about 72 million kilowatt-hours
costing about P427.5 million that its offices had been consuming
every year.
Angara said Meralco also should
not pass on to its consumers its franchise tax.
“System loss [stolen
electricity] should be limited to only 4.5 percent. Anything beyond
that, Meralco should assume and not pass on to consumers,” he
added.
Angara, however, refused to blame
Meralco alone for the high power rates in the country.
“The Energy Regulatory
Commission is also to blame. It is supposed to be a regulatory body
but it seems those supposed to be regulated are dictating what it
should do,” he said. “We are also to blame for passing the
Electric Power Industry Reform Act that has caused many of these
problems.”
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