Congressional hearing in-aid-of-election!

Perhaps it was a sign of desperation, but the report was true that the Pangasinan Provincial Board had approved a resolution to allow a nuclear plant in their Province. That today, the Philippines continue to have those pesky blackouts is a reality that brings us back to the old days of the Cory Administration. During most of her reign, the country was at its darkest yet, ironically, many pundits refer to the Marcos Regime as the “dark days”. In truth, the Marcos government had the ultimate solution to our power woes - the Bataan Nuclear Powered Plant (BNPP).

I don’t have to tell you again what happened to the BNPP except that the Cory Administration mothballed it and thanks to our misplaced Pinoy pride, she agreed to pay the full amount for that confounded power plant! Worse, the cases of corruption filed against Westinghouse were thrown out of court for lack of mrit or evidence. So why didn’t we restart the nuke plants when we could still have run it? Because the Filipino scientists who were schooled and trained to operate that plant found jobs elsewhere where they earned more money, that’s why! So even if we could still have operated the BNPP, no one could run it anymore.

Now Congress wants to probe why we’re having brownouts. Hmmm, what can we expect Congress to come up with? We already know what the problem is, that whether they like it or not, the Philippine economy has fared pretty well in the midst of a world financial crisis, yet despite our slow economic growth, very few power plants have been built. After the new ones that were constructed some years back became operational, I do not see any new powered plants in the horizon!

Here in Cebu, there are two coal-fired plants that are soon to be operational, the clean-coal Cebu Energy Development Corp., a joint venture by Aboitiz Power and MetroBank in Sangi, Toledo City and the Kepco coal-fired plant in Naga. But this would only ease our power problems, but not address future demands, which means if Cebu continues to grow, we would still have brownouts, unless we do something now!

Another issue that we have to face are those self-professed environmentalists who block any powered plant that are being planned. It’s about time that the Filipino people decide what kind of plants we should use for our needs and when that decision is made, let no one block it! I agree with the use of nuclear plants as they are the most efficient but they are capital intensive, which means higher power rates. Investors only want a steady and stable power supply and clean coal energy is by far still the best plant to be operated in this country!

Now what can we expect from that congressional hearing? Cheaper power rates? I doubt it! As The Philippine Star editorial last Wednesday pointed out, “Such grilling, without the legislative action sought by the energy industry that could help bring down power costs, is one of the reasons why the country cannot attract the kind of large-scale investments that can pave the way for the development of a reliable energy supply whose cost is competitive with those in the rest of the region.” This congressional hearing has been called “In-aid-of-election” as the media would certainly highlight this activity in the front page.

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Yesterday we published the results of a survey done by the Campaigns & Image Group (Philippines), but I ran out of space to include the segment for urban, suburban and overseas voters. So here goes. For the urban segment, there were 1,550 responses. Aquino got 19.74%, Villar 21.44%, Teodoro 14.94% and Erap 11.25%. For the suburban segment there were 1,050 respondents. Aquino got 8.26%, Villar 2.98%, Teodoro 0.92% and Erap 0.40%. For the Overseas segment, there were only 154 respondents. Aquino got 2.25%, Villar 5.46%, Teodoro 1.55%, Erap 0.65%.

So there were a total of 2,764 respondents to this survey and Aquino bagged a total of 836, Villar got 825, Teodoro got 481 and Erap got 339. Let me emphasize that this survey clearly puts Noynoy Aquino and Manny Villar neck-and-neck in this race. But “Gibo” Teodoro has overtaken former Pres. Joseph “Erap” Estrada in this survey that ended in Jan.31, 2010.

What is crystal clear is that, Noynoy Aquino must jumpstart his campaign as he has been steadily losing to Manny Villar and Gibo Teodoro. What Sen. Manny Villar ought to do is stick on his present campaign that could send him to Malacañang, despite all the negative press he’s been getting. As for Gibo, you cannot count him out because everytime people get to see and meet him, they gravitate to him as he is a very charismatic man. But then, elections are still in May and certainly the numbers will surely change!

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