Jocjoc asylum to open US to wave of fugitives

TIDAL WAVE: The insistence of former Agriculture Undersecretary Jocelyn “Jocjoc” Bolante that he be given asylum in the United States because assassins would get him if he returned to the Philippines is ridiculous.

If the US Court of Appeals grants asylum to Jocjoc on the basis of his alleged fears, the US would be swamped by a tidal wave of foreigners seeking permanent residence on self-serving claims that they would be assassinated if sent back home.

Even assuming the threat is real, the US cannot provide haven to every joker whose life appears to be in danger. More so if the applicant is actually a fugitive from justice or his life had been endangered because of his own indiscretion or criminal activities.

If Jocjoc needs protection, he should ask assistance from Philippine authorities like the rest of us Filipinos — and not insult his home country that had employed him in a grand way by implying that it cannot protect its citizens.

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GOV’T HIT MEN?: The situation might be different if the asylum applicant were marked for liquidation by agents or hit men of his own government. If this is Jocjoc’s serious allegation, he has to say so and prove it.

Jocjoc fled the Philippines following the 2004 presidential elections after he was accused of diverting to the Arroyo administration campaign part of P728 million in fertilizer funds under his care.

The Senate had ordered Jocjoc arrested for repeatedly snubbing its invitations to testify in its inquiry into where the fertilizer funds went. When he fled to the US, his Philippine passport was withdrawn and his US temporary visitor’s visa cancelled.

In 2006, upon his return to Los Angeles from Seoul with an invalidated visa, US immigration authorities detained him.

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CURDLED MILK: Do not expect the National Power Corp. to level with us consumers and tell us honestly how its rates have soared over the years because of inefficiency and corruption. They have to protect themselves and their padrinos upstairs.

The only way we can know the true state of Napocor and how it has driven up electricity rates is for President Gloria Arroyo to change the people running it (to the ground).

It would help also if the President told some people close to her to stop treating Napocor as a milking cow, because the milk of corruption is already curdling and may poison not only her administration but also the economy.

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ANOTHER SPIKE: Napocor is so insensitive as to again apply for another rate increase. It has asked the Energy Regulatory Commission to allow it to raise its basic rate by 36.85 centavos per kilowatt-hour.

Torn between protecting its financial health and looking after consumer welfare, it has chosen to save its neck and worry about consumers later.

Napocor claims that rate increases had become inevitable because of the sale of three of its power plants. Insiders tell us, however, that a series of bad decisions tainted with graft were the main reasons for the need for another rate increase.

Napocor is being hounded by such issues as its failed privatization, messy procurement of fuel, and inefficiency in the running of power plants.

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FAILED BID: In an eight-page application filed last June 8, Napocor said it must adjust its Luzon grid rates from P3.89 to P4.26 per kwh after it privatized three plants: the 112-megawatt Pantabangan-Masiway hydroelectric plant, the 36-mw Magat hydroelectric plant, and the 600-mw Masinloc coal-fired power plant.

Napocor is not being honest. Insiders confide that the need for raising rates is traceable mainly to its practice of creating an emergency and then buying coal on short-term, instead of signing long-term lower-price supply contracts.

The modus operandi has been exposed: a bidding based on unrealistic rates naturally leads to a failed bid, which is used as the excuse for resorting to negotiated purchases at higher prices based on the contrived emergency.

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TCRI SCANDAL: Then you must have heard of the story of Napocor awarding a coal contract of almost a billion pesos to an obscure firm whose paid-up capital is only P62,500 and its technical track record zero!

Inserting this firm as an agent of the real coal supplier from Indonesia is unnecessary. Its commission adds to the cost of the fuel and the retail price of electricity.

If Napocor just bothered to check the background of the firm, the Transpacific Consolidated Resources Inc., it would have hesitated dealing with it. What or who compelled it to entertain TCRI?

Since the five TCRI incorporators are simply not in the league of bona fide coal suppliers, some influential personalities must have been behind them. Napocor has the obligation to identify the Big Shot(s).

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OPEN ACCESS: It seems Pampanga Rep. Mikey Arroyo, chairman of the House energy committee, is beginning to see the bigger picture — that delaying the privatization of Napocor generating assets is not the way to reduce rates.

His committee has dropped its earlier idea of amending the Electric Power Industry Reform Act to accelerate the Open Access arrangement that lets big users to choose their electricity supplier.

The planned amendment would lower the threshold of privatization from 70 to 50 percent before Open Access is allowed. Now Arroyo’s committee wants to stick to 70 percent.

Arroyo has been quoted as saying that lowering the threshold was now unnecessary since industry players themselves have agreed to speed up the implementation of Open Access.

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