Power play

LONDON – There’s more than meets the eye to the crisis which grips the Manila Electric Company (Meralco), coupled with veiled threats to throw Metro Manila, and even the entire Luzon grid into blackout. From what we’ve learned, the government of President Macapagal-Arroyo seems to be making a move (a Manchurian Candidate gambit?) to take over control of the mega power company.

Since the five justices of the Supreme Court’s third division voted unanimously to compel Meralco to refund what the High Court ruled was an overcharge to its more than three million consumers, imposed over the past several years, the Meralco may have to "pay back", under the terms of the judgment, as much as P28.15 billion – an astounding sum, considering that Meralco only recently claimed to be close to bankruptcy and unable to cope with its current load.

Was the latter contention just a bluff, possibly intended to stave off an unfavorable court decision – or does it presage a plan by Meralco’s executives and supervisors to launch a sort of "guerrilla war", with the consumers held hostage? Abangan, the coming "brown-outs".

Ranking Lopez empire and Meralco executives, on the other hand, intimate that it’s the other way around. The GMA administration, through "negotiators", is attempting (they complained) a hostile take-over of the huge power distribution conglomerate. When the Supreme Court promulgated its decision approving the demand of the government’s Energy Regulatory Board (ERB), now called the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC), that Meralco refund about P10.8 billion to electricity-users based on overcharging allegedly committed between February 1994 and February 1998, overtures have been made to the Lopezes, who control the giant firm, by certain delegados del Palacio – that’s what Meralco insiders aver.

Among these negotiators, my Deep Throat insists, sources allege, have been Finance Secretary Lito Camacho and Energy Secretary Vince Perez. It is being proposed, outright, insiders maintain, that five board seats in the Meralco governing body be immediately given the government, plus the positions of Chairman and, separately, that of Chief Operating Officer (COO). To reinforce this allegation, I learned before my airplane’s departure for London, via Hong Kong, that last Friday night, Oscar Lopez, the chief of the Lopez corporations, and Meralco Chairman and CEO, Manolo Lopez, had been summoned to Malacañang for a private conference with the President and her top aides, including presumably Camacho and Perez.

Will the government, then, assume control of the energy firm in this rough-tough fashion? What about the "suggestion" that, if the Lopezes accede to the Catch 22 proposition being pushed by the Arroyo administration, the Meralco’s troubles will be mitigated – and a more lenient "reconsideration" might emerge from the Supreme Court?

What? How can this be true? Is the Supreme Court going to emerge as a "rubber stamp" of the GMA empire? With Associate Justice Tony Carpio and so many GMA appointees already there – and three more "coming" – could there be a swing vote in the High Tribunal capable of being coaxed into doing Her Majesty’s bidding? (Pardon me for my choice of words, but I’m here in London, where statues of Queen Victoria, Elizabeth the 1st, the warrior Queen Boadicea who fought the Romans, and other formidable femmes frown down on me from every corner, and my hotel is just a meander down Green Park from the current Queen’s Buckingham Palace.)

Queen Gloria’s reign might just be in the final stages of gestation, capped by the submission to her throne of a power firm and the last vestiges of the old Sugar Bloc, which once made Presidents tremble.

One thing, deplorably, appears in prospect. We may have to brace ourselves for brown-outs, power outages, and energy shortfalls. When some people are tampering with the switch, there’s danger of a nation falling into darkness. A warning: Don’t let "power games" discomfit the nation, destroy the everyday lives of our people, and ruin business in general. We’re already uncomfortably on the cusp of despair. A little more senseless tribulation, perceived as the product of selfish – well, to risk of painful pun – power-grabbing could burst the dam.

If the people burst out of it, furious and resentful – then both sides (you know whom I’m referring to) will have more to contend with than they bargained for. I’m no prophet of doom (I feel our future could be bright), but people’s feelings are brittle. When they snap, there’s no stopping a tidal wave from sweeping over all of us – and that includes the embankments of the Pasig and Mendiola.

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THE ROVING EYE . . . There’s an "unconfirmed" rumor that terminals tycoon Ricky Razon and businessman Endika Aboitiz (husband of whom?) have bought the shares of Jeffrey Cheng and his father, to take over majority control of PIATCO Terminal 3. If this is true, does it mean "all systems go" for the controversial deal? No wonder, Razon has been trying to sell his newspaper, The Manila Standard – to raise funds for this mega deal? He has been hinting he wants to procure hotels, like the two Waterfront hotels in Cebu City (one with the casino). But not Fort Ilokandia Hotel in Laoag, please. Unless Ricky wants to go into an exotic business up there – like, you guessed it . . . Everytime I arrive in London, it’s raining. And so it was yesterday – cold, gray rain. But, even when it’s water-logged, London sparkles. If it weren’t for my wet socks, I’d have thoroughly enjoyed it. We walked over to Buckingham Palace from our hotel to salute the Queen – although she wasn’t at the window or the famous balconies where they always display the Royals, waving wanly at the cameras and the multitudes. The flag was flying, which indicates she was in residence. I remember the time, some years ago, when Her Majesty woke up one morning to find a stranger peering at her from the foot of her bed. Without blinking not knowing what else to do, she had the presence of mind to ask the intruder: "Will you have a cup of tea?" When he said, "Yes"; that’s the time she summoned her room maid – and the guards. They took the intruder, who had sneaked over the wall, away – without serving him tea. The next day, the newspapers screamed: Where were the Grenadier Guards? The Horse Guards? The Queen’s own Household Cavalry? The Blues & Royals? Where, indeed? This just goes to show that nobody’s safe on this planet – not even the Queen. What if the intruder had been named Osama, Saddam, or Bashami? Or Ping Lacson?