Afraid to govern

The Multisectoral Movement for Good Governance (MGG) rated P-Noy’s performance 5.9 for 2014 on a scale of 1 to 10, in which 10 is the highest. This means, with just a year to go in office, P-Noy was rated to have performed below expectations.

The report released ahead of P-Noy’s final State of the Nation Address (SONA), gives him a grade below the minimum score of 7.5 for the promises he made at the beginning of his term. While the grade concedes the President is “on track”, it also means “something has been accomplished but is lower than expected.”

 It should concern P-Noy his latest grade is lower than the 6.58 score given by MGG for 2013, and was the lowest since 2011 when Mr. Aquino scored 5.66. MGG started benchmarking the performance of the Aquino administration using a data-based assessment that does not rely on perception, impressions and anecdotes.

Ironically, P-Noy scored the highest in governance. MGG gave him a score of seven, maintaining the score in the previous year. MGG said gains in the fight against corruption were notable resulting in a marked improvement in the Philippine ranking in the Transparency International Corruption Index.

But MGG also said: “However, corruption issues continue to be a serious cause for concern, especially in the bureaucracy and the judiciary.” Maybe they are saying P-Noy is personally clean, but unfortunately it is monkey business as usual elsewhere in government including some of his closest aides.

There had been talks of a pretty detailed and no-holds barred report about some top P-Noy aides involved in smuggling. If this is true, it is hoped the report sees the light of day soon.

If there is one thing that’s frustrating with the performance of the Aquino administration, it is this general fear to govern. It seems rather easy for vested interests from the INC to Aboitiz Power to make P-Noy see things their way, Daang Matuwid be damned.

INC managed to get the Customs commissioner out because he won’t appoint their man. Against the advice of his own Energy secretary, P-Noy appointed a nominee of Aboitiz Power to ERC, the agency that regulates power producers. The two examples show P-Noy taking the easy way out… afraid to govern.

I don’t know if it is just because she is only an officer-in-charge at the Department of Energy or something else. But I see this fear to govern in a recent statement of Zenaida Monsada that shows a reluctance to implement a circular that will make our power rates more transparent.

Monsada said they have not decided whether the competitive selection process (CSP) in securing power supply agreements (PSAs) should be mandatory or voluntary. Then she passed on the onus of making the determination to the ERC.

Perhaps it really is the ERC who should decide on the issue, but why should there be any hesitation to make it mandatory? Just because a major distribution utility made noises about making it voluntary, they are now shaking in their boots.

The circular issued by former Energy Secretary Icot Petilla is clearly mandatory. All distribution utilities (DUs) can sign Power Supply Agreements or PSAs only after competitive bidding. That is to ensure there will be no sweetheart deals between DUs and power generators, specially those belonging to the same conglomerate.

The Demand Aggregation and Supply Auctioning Policy (DASAP), is a landmark policy that may finally make EPIRA work for the benefit of consumers. It must be mandatory or what’s the use? It will also level the playing field that will encourage independent power generators to compete in an industry controlled by our oligarchic elite.

What is there to think about? We all want to make the electric power industry more transparent and we all want reasonable prices of electricity in a regime of free and fair competition and full public accountability.

Petilla saw the industry must increase transparency in the procurement process of electricity supply. Their current bilateral contracts, even with ERC approval, cannot provide that. Instilling competition in the procurement and supply of electric power to all electricity end-users is, after all, what EPIRA was supposed to deliver.

It is this same fear to govern that plagues our telecoms industry regulator so that we all suffer the slowest broadband speed, as well as one of the highest rates in the region. Regulatory capture of the National Telecoms Commission or NTC is obvious as is the case with ERC in the power sector.

Last week, the Federal Communications Commission or FCC slapped AT&T with a $100 million fine, accusing the second-largest cellular carrier in the US of improperly slowing down Internet speeds for customers who had signed up for “unlimited” data plans. Isn’t that our problem here in the Philippines too? Where is our NTC in this?

According to the Washington Post, the fine is the largest ever levied by the agency. We can only be in awe of the FCC’s guts in standing up for the American broadband consumer. Unfortunately for us, no one is looking out for the Pinoy broadband consumer.

FCC chairman Tom Wheeler said in a statement: “Consumers deserve to get what they pay for… The FCC will not stand idly by while consumers are deceived by misleading marketing materials and insufficient disclosure.”

I can almost hear the NTC, which is directly under Malacañang, say that it doesn’t have the powers to do anything like what the FCC did. I have heard for the longest time the excuse that broadband services are treated by our law as value added services not subject to the same regulatory reach of the NTC like plain old telephone service.

If that is the case, how come they have not asked Congress to correct the discrepancy? No one really cares about plain old telephone service these days… not the consumers… not the phone companies. Indeed, the phone companies bundle regular phone service with broadband service, practically giving it away.

Thus, if there is any service the consumer needs the NTC to regulate, it is the provision of broadband services. For most of us today, being connected to the Internet is as essential as light and water, both of which are regulated.

I have heard the NTC commissioner say they are helpless too in mandating what should be mandated to make all broadband service providers do what is needed to speed up the service we get. Such helplessness on the part of NTC and ERC destroys the very reason why we have government at all.

The very serious problem they now have with the MRT 3 is also another example of this fear to govern. They have been kicking the problem down the road the past five years. Granted, as P-Noy said, he inherited the problem, he and his DOTC team have had five years to do something about it.

They will not begin to solve the problems at MRT 3 until they sit down to sort things out with the private owners of the system. The private owners are no angels and I think the Build Lease Transfer or BLT contract they got FVR to sign is terribly tilted to milk every centavo of revenue from the system for themselves.

But it is a fact the system is being managed from the start by government (DOTC). DOTC is leasing everything from MRTC. It doesn’t matter to MRTC what fare DOTC is charging the commuters so long as they get their lease payment.

It gets complicated. The original private owners securitized their earnings from the lease payments and the securities were subsequently bought by two government banks, DBP and Land Bank. So, government’s lease payment is effectively going from one government pocket to the other.

Of course the private owners still have ownership rights which they now claim are being violated by DOTC. Why can’t they all sit down and thresh out the legal stuff once and for all so the modernization of the system can really get going?

I am told several appointments to meet have been set, but Sec. Jun Abaya consistently begs off at the last minute. Why? Ironically, the few times they made decisions turned out to be bad decisions that caught the attention of the Ombudsman.

Fear to govern seems to be the hallmark of this administration. They hide under the cover of Daang Matuwid to explain why they are unable to decide. Will electing Mar Roxas be a continuation of this failure to govern? It does look that way.

But then again, P-Noy still has a little less than a year to catch up. He could start making decisions they have been afraid to make for so long… decisions to benefit the people, even if the entrenched oligarchy gets offended in the process. But frankly, I wouldn’t bet on it.

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @boochanco