Obama wins his reelection bid

After a long, arduous, vigorous and vicious presidential campaign that ended up in a statistical tie when the polling centers opened last Tuesday. As I’m writing this piece, US President Barrack Obama already won his reelection bid and Gov. Mitt Romney already made a concession speech and revealed that he had already called US President Barrack Obama to congratulate him for his slim victory and above all, he was asking the American people to unite before the victor because American needs to unite after this highly divisive elections. Thus, ended one of the highly contested democratic elections that the world has ever seen.

What we saw happened in America was also the victory of the two-party system, a system that we threw away. What I find amazing is that, less than 24-hours after the last polling center closed… the American people already knew who won between the two candidates, even in this very evenly matched elections.

If this happened in the Philippines, I don’t think that the challenger would concede with the speed that Gov. Mitt Romney conceded defeat. What we would probably see is a Mitt Romney contesting the presidential race all the way to the Supreme Court. But then that is America for you, while we Filipinos still have to become politically mature.

Yesterday we wrote about the prediction of Wayne Allyn Root from Caesar’s Palace, which was sent to me by my friends from the US. This bookie boasted that he is able to predict the outcome not only of sporting events, but also the US presidential elections. Well, this time around, Mr. Root must have lost a lot of money because while his analysis was right on the dot, however the American people did not buy his analysis because Pres. Obama won, instead of Mitt Romney. Indeed, Las Vegas bookies do make mistakes and when they do… it would be monetarily costly to them.

At this point, we can only unite with the American people for they have already spoken and chose to give Pres. Barrack Obama another four years in office. Now whether Pres. Obama can deliver what he failed to deliver in the last four years, we can only wish him luck.

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Newly-appointed Energy Secretary Jericho Petilla appeared before Headstart with Karen Davila on ANC and revealed that he has come up with a suggestion to give nuclear power a second look. With electricity very high in the Philippines, this is a question that needs to be addressed. We boast so much that Foreign Direct Investors (FDI) are coming to the Philippines, but the high power cost is a huge turn off for these FDI’s. In a way this is a new and fresh approach coming from a former governor of Leyte that hosts a very green geothermal energy in Tongonan, Leyte.

In all truth, the Philippines missed the nuclear bus, but not because we didn’t embrace nuclear power, but rather because of ugly unbridled politics. We know too well that the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP) was under construction by Westinghouse when the opposition then tagged it as a highly “corrupt” deal by Marcos cronies.

Back then, any huge deal hatch by the Marcos dictatorship was instantly perceived as corrupt. Since the media was then controlled by the Marcos dictatorship, the Filipino people tend to believe the opposition who only spread ugly rumors without presenting any evidence that what they are saying is true. So when the Filipino people threw out the Marcos dictatorship during the EDSA revolt, what do you think that Cory supporters did? Stop the operation of the BNPP!

Here was our first nuclear plant about 90% close to completion. But because Tita Cory believed in their own yarn, she did now allow the Bataan Nuclear Plant to operate. A case of corruption was filed against Westinghouse, which only proved that the accusations were nothing but a baseless lie. But then months later, Chernobyl, the Soviet nuclear plant blew up and scared the whole world about nuclear power. Hence the BNPP was mothballed and worse of all, we had to pay Westinghouse for this.

But decades later, we learned that the twin nuclear plant in Yongbyon South Korea that Westinghouse built at the same time our Bataan Nuclear plant was constructed was still operating giving the Koreans very cheap power rates. At this point, I dare say that the Aquino government must address this issue once and for all so all questions may be answered whether the Philippines can reduce its electricity cost.

Meanwhile, back here in Cebu we are already getting reports that by 2015 we will once more be experiencing power problems. We know too well that it takes a minimum of five years to construct a power plant. This tells you that in three years Cebu will be experiencing brownouts… so it is time to act now and act fast before the problem stares us in the face.

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