In this slow-mo country, you never get things done that way. What she should do, we think, is grab a few glaring examples and thrown them in jail with a lot of attendant noise – while the rest die biting their nails as they wait nervously for their turn.
It’s much like smoke-belching on crowded EDSA. You don’t try to be democratic and test every vehicle that passes. Instead, you pick first the sooty buses whose smoke can be spotted 10 miles away. You don’t even need special gadgets to confirm the obvious violations. You then shoot dead the engine with armor-piercing bullets and solve the problem on the spot.
The President knows, or should know, who among her Cabinet members are busy making hay while the glorious sun shines. If she does not, she must be sleeping on the job or making hay with them.
The Iron Lady can then parade before media the big grafters garbed in the now-familiar orange t-shirt with a cardboard hanging in front of each one showing his/her name and the amount stolen. (On second thought, maybe the names won’t be needed as we all know them.)
Purging the big-time grafters should be easy for the President, since most of them serve at her pleasure. If they do not pass the Caesar’s wife test of not only looking clean but also looking clean, they will have to be kicked out – minus their ill-gotten millions.
It takes forever to review the contracts of more than 30 IPPs, checking which provision are illegal, onerous or unreasonable, then putting together the findings of that backbreaking review and translating the voluminous paperwork into lower electric bills for Juan Pasang Krus.
The President has said that some of the IPP contracts reviewed were found to be legally flawed, some technically deficient and others financially unsound. Some contracts carried various defects in varying degrees.
Instead of waiting for all of the IPP contracts to be reviewed and a master recommendation submitted to her – all the while delaying the corrective measures that would benefit consumers – why does not the President act right away on the patently illegal contacts while reserving action on the rest?
Resolute action in favor of consumers will send a clear signal, a warning, to crooks in business and in government. But we will scare away foreign investors? Yes, we will scare the carpetbaggers, but who needs them anyway?
On the other hand, legitimate businessmen should welcome the clearing of the field of slick operators and the steps being taken to make the playing field even. But somebody has to hurry up with those planned reforms, if any.
The consequences of such extreme measure are obvious: Costly bullets are wasted; somebody might get hit by the ricocheting slugs; dislodged passengers will be inconvenienced; the vehicle will pose an obstruction on the crowded route; and the "executioner" of the offending vehicle opens himself to criminal charges.
Instead, the composite anti-smoke-belching teams should go to the garage or depots of the bus companies before the vehicles roll out. Testing will be done in the premises, not on the road. The vehicles found unfit must be grounded until another test, made after the remedial measures are taken, shows that the smoke-belching has been corrected.
(By "remedial measures" we don’t mean "substantial compliance" – the latest euphemism added to the lexicon of extortionist officials dropping a hint to their victim.)
Without meaning to besmirch the reputation of anybody, our unsolicited advice would be for the PAGC or the President’s own intelligence team to look more closely on high-profile Executive officials who are likely to run for Vice President or senator. These aspirants are under extreme pressure to raise millions for their 2004 electoral campaign.
That embarrassing paragraph subheaded "How to catch ’em" should have read: "It’s simple arithmetic. You add up his legitimate income during his tenure. You then subtract this total income from his assets acquired during that time, making sure there is reasonable leeway for error and good faith. You confiscate the difference as ill-gotten and you jail the official if the difference is outrageously big."
We said that "As applied to power plants, BTU is the amount of heat needed to produce a kilowatt-hour (kwh) of electricity." A few readers thought that was our definition of BTU. We were not defining BTU; we were just saying that some local plants use BTU to measure the amount of heat needed to generate a kilowatt-hour of electricity.
For the benefit of those who are interested, BTU is an English standard unit of energy. One BTU is the amount of thermal energy (or heat) needed to raise the temperature of one pound of pure liquid water by one Fahrenheit degree.
Most people would say ". . . the heat needed to raise the temperature of water . . . one degree Fahrenheit." Our Physics professor in Diliman would insist on our saying "one Fahrenheit degree,’ and not "one degree Fahrenheit." Spot the big difference.
Btw, when establishing the value of one BTU, the water must be at that temperature at which it has its greatest density, and that is 39 degrees Fahrenheit.