Still others counselled Mrs. Arroyo to just let Perez go on leave. After all, the latter had offered to do so because of bleeding ulcers.
At stake is no longer Perez’s credibility as a Cabinet member, but the seriousness of Mrs. Arroyo to fight corruption. She was swept to office by a nation weary of a plundering predecessor. At that time, RP’s was ranked the 25th most corrupt government. Now it’s No. 11.
By contrast, Kua never played politics in his three years at the PTA. Although newly appointed by then-President Joseph Estrada in 2000, he resisted the plan to dump Metro Manila’s garbage on Semirara Island. He risked the ire of Estrada officials, and cronies who would’ve made money from the deal, by arguing for tourism. Semirara is only a few miles from the country’s top tourist destination, Boracay.
Kua just did his job quietly. Shunning publicity, he finished such big projects as the Boracay water supply system, the Luneta boardwalk, the Korean Gold Academy at the Zamboanga Country Club, and the cottages at Balicasag Dive Resort.
Because of the tourism department employees’ spontaneously show of support by way of lunchbreak pickets, Kua has decided to contest his ouster. After all, the law that established the PTA states that the GM "shall serve for a term of six years, unless sooner removed for cause." Kua has no administrative or criminal case to cut short his term.
Under the Act, aromatics content in unleaded gasoline should be reduced to 35 percent from the present 40, and benzene from two percent from four. Aromatics have been found harmful to the ozone layer. Benzene causes cancer.
Oil firms have up to Jan. 2003 to comply. They could have done so earlier, but didn’t. In fact, they’re asking for postponement of the deadline, and the government is inclined to grant it. The convenient excuse is the certainty of war in Iraq, which could triple oil prices for a year.
The first argument of the Big Three is that it would cost them at least P3.5 billion each to retool their refineries to suit the aromatics and benzene limits. Although the three have each been netting more than a billion pesos a year, they said they cannot afford it.
The cost-efficient alternative, they claim, is to import fuel that meets the law’s standards. The price increase, they try to scare government regulators, would "only" be a painful 80¢ to P1.50 per liter.
The Filipino Inventors Society doesn’t buy that line. Some award-winning members believe that importing would be profiteering through trasfer-pricing. The Big Three would buy from their mother firms and increase profits for both sides by increasing prices.
The Society doesn’t stop at criticizing the oil firms. It points to a member who can supply additives to reduce aromatics and benzene – and for less than one percent of the P10 billion pricetag.
Juanito Simon has concocted oil and gasoline additives that can wipe out more than 35 percent of aromatics and almost all of the benzene. The blends can also eliminate up to 75 percent of smoke emissions from diesel, while improving the cetane content and reducing sulfur from 0.08 percent to 0.02. Simon has been selling these for years in the domestic and international markets, under the Per-tua and Tribotech brandnames.
All the oil firms have to do is mix one ml of additive for every liter of fuel. A US-trained metallurgist and lubrication engineer, Simon estimates that it would cost the oil firms only P33 million each – not P3.5 billion – to refurbish their refineries to suit the additives. In effect, the price increase would be a negligible half-centavo per liter.
Simon asserts that the additives would make catalytic converters unnecessary. This would cut the cost of brand-new vehicles by at least P50,000, the same savings of jeepney and bus assemblers.
Instead of being stampeded by the oil firms calculations into delaying the Clean Air Act, energy officials could look into Simon’s claims. The Department of Science and Technology, which in in touch with the Inventors Society, can conduct performance tests. And if Simon is proven correct, the government can tell the Big Three to shove it.