This week, power consumers should be receiving their billings. The billings were delayed by haggling between the power distributors and the Energy Regulatory Commission over how to stagger the unavoidable price spike.
When the bills do come, we will all be very angry. In the end, we all just dig deeper into our pockets and hand over the cash.
The Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PCCI) spoke bluntly, calling the price spike and the confused government response to it a manmade calamity. Comparing the price spike to Typhoon Yolanda, the chamber warned this aberrant pricing would not only anger consumers but also distress businesses.
As in Typhoon Yolanda, government response was a failure. It turns out, the Malampaya maintenance shutdown was scheduled over a year ago. Government had all the time to undertake contingency measures. There was a lot of talk, but no action.
The PCCI thinks a lot of things might have been done over the past 12 months. The Department of Energy might have encouraged long-term power supply contracts to avert price volatility. Provisions might have been made to have independent power producers increase output to cover the supply shortfall caused by the shutdowns. If all else failed, government might have stepped in strongly and suspended the operation of the wholesale electricity spot market to prevent price speculation.
That is all water under the bridge. Because government failed to act, we are in for a period of price aberration that will anger consumers and strain many enterprises.
The word “Noynoying†gained currency of late to describe the routinely late and ineffective government response to anticipated problems. That word resurfaced in the wake of government’s incompetent handling of the super-typhoon’s devastation. That word is so apt to describe government’s handling of the power price spike.
As in the first few days after the typhoon hit us, this administration’s instinctive response has been to assign blame.
Since last week, the Palace repeated the propaganda line that they will conduct an investigation to see if there is a conspiracy among the independent power producers to unduly profit from the scarcity. Remember how, in the aftermath of Yolanda, the President declared he wanted an investigation done on why so many died in the calamity.
The propaganda line aiming to pin blame on the power producers and deflect criticism from government incompetence should have been killed last week. Sen. Francis Escudero, exercising a lot of common sense, attacked the absurdity of this propaganda line. Why would power producers stop production just to force prices to spike? Since they are selling nothing during the period of high prices, they profit nothing from the spike.
Despite the obvious absurdity of that propaganda line, President BS Aquino continued repeating it in Tokyo until the weekend.
Leftist groups, always quick in taking advantage of consumer distress, clamored last week for government to produce subsidies to offset higher power costs. The Palace, having run out of any other policy options because of its own indolence and incompetence, appears happy to oblige.
With dramatically falling approval ratings, the Aquino presidency has become more populist than the ideological populist groups. When, for instance, people complained about the parole granted Antonio Leviste, Aquino expressed dismay over the grant of parole and threatened to have the Pardons and Parole Board punished — even as his own justice secretary maintained the parole followed due course.
The Palace is obviously scrambling to find a way to mitigate the power price spike — not so much to save the economy but to prop up its sagging popularity ratings. One suggestion was to divert money from the Malampaya funds to partially subsidize electricity costs. That, clearly, will be illegal.
During a chat with journalists in Tokyo over the weekend, Aquino hinted it was possible to use the President’s Social Fund to mitigate the price spike. That does not seem too legal either. Besides, whatever is in that particular slush fund is better used helping speed up the rehabilitation of Eastern Visayas.
As the Palace scrambles for a meaningful response to the price spike, after defending its inevitability for weeks, it will become increasingly clear government is now two or three steps behind the unfolding problem. The measures the administration is now considering should have been considered long ago.
There is always a political price to pay for indolence.
Meanwhile, the deeper problem underlying the power price spike is becoming clearer. The margin between available supply and rising demand for power becomes tighter by the day. No progress was made towards improving power reserves when Rene Almendras was energy secretary. If the same smugness we saw in the 12 months before the Malampaya shutdown happens in the case of our overall power supply, we will be in darkness by the end of this second Aquino presidency — just as we were during the last years of the first.
Arrogance
When Ricky Carandang’s resignation was announced, the general reaction was indifference. No one really understood what his job was. During his tenure, he personified the arrogant attitude of the entire administration towards everybody else: unleashing his bully trolls, the equivalent of the Nazi brown shirts, on people who dared disagree with the official view of things.
As an afterthought, but not out of sympathy for Carandang, several commentators said the President is a tough product to sell.
President BS Aquino reinforced this observation the other day as he quickly covered for the beleaguered Mar Roxas. He should have watched the viral video first, a vivid testament to the arrogance of power.