EDCA: So many unanswered questions

For our special presentation on our talk show Straight from the Sky, we give you updates from the Visayan Electric Company and a discussion on the Power Industry with Mr. Sebastian “Basti” Lacson, Chief Operating Officer  of  VECO. It’s been awhile since we’ve had a VECO official on this show and I’m glad to have Basti talk about the problems and challenges in the power industry, whether the Electric Power Industry Reform Act has been good for our people or not.

With Mindanao suffering 10-hour power outages, we should be thankful that Cebu has been spared from this problem. However we cannot shy away from our responsibility to conserve energy. I’m sure you must have seen those huge signs in many offices that say “Conserve Energy.” But do we take these signs seriously? More often than not, we see signs along the road that blares “Drive Safely” yet there are so many road accidents. That’s because people do not read signs or if they do, they just don’t take those signs seriously.

Well, VECO is the first power company to respond to the call from Malacañang to conserve energy and will soon be launching its latest program CEBU UNPLUGGED! What can I say, but it’s about time that we in Cebu took the lead and really and physically does something about conserving energy. VECO suggests that from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., let us all unplug our refrigerators. Call it an actual experiment if you wish. But if we all unplugged our refrigerators at the desired time, we would certainly save a lot in power cost and help VECO solve peak demand issues.

So watch this very interesting show with Basti Lacson and learn from him what’s happening in the power industry and what’s going on inside VECO on SkyCable’s channel 61 at 8:00 tonight with replays on Wednesday and Saturday same time and channel. We also have replays on MyTV’s channel 30 at 7:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m. on M-W-F.

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US Pres. Barrack Obama has come and gone, but he left us with a trail of unanswered questions notably about the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement that US Ambassador Philip Goldberg and Philippine Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin signed last week. But was EDCA a new treaty that needed the nod of the Philippine Senate or was it a mere addendum to the Visiting Forces Agreement that was instituted as part and parcel of the Mutual Defense Treaty signed in 1951?

Because of the pork barrel scam that has kept most of our senators busy thinking how to survive this politically toxic scam, it is evident that Malacañang did not inform the Senate about the signing of EDCA. So the Senate will be looking into this issue this week. Now what if the Senate says that EDCA is a new treaty? What would these senators do?

Of course, at this point, I would like to believe that the political lines between the opposition and the pro-Aquino senators are very much intact. However the Senate today should be more concerned about the huge majority of people who believe that senators no longer have any moral ascendancy to continue their respective terms, especially those who are in the list of Janet Lim Napoles.

Incidentally, the only time that the Senate took the side of Pres. Benigno “PNoy” Aquino III was during the impeachment and conviction of former Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato Corona and the nation already knows why those senators had Corona convicted.

In fact there is now an air of animosity in the Senate because of that still unpublished list of names of senators in the sworn statement of Napoles. Right now, we only know of Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile, Sen. Jinggoy Estrada, and Sen. Bong Revilla. So who are the other senators involved in the pork scam? Why is this list not being publicized until now? This reminds me of the highly-questionable envelop that the pro-Erap senators refused to open during the impeachment trial of Erap, which triggered EDSA II.

Pundits are saying that some of these senators could use EDCA as their “bargaining chip” to pressure Malacañang to remove their names from that list or they’d vote to call EDCA a treaty and throw the whole damn thing out and put Pres. PNoy Aquino in a bad light.

Pundits have already said that we got nothing in return for signing EDCA. One salient provision was EDCA would improve capabilities during disasters. Come now, was this necessary? The US Seventh Fleet was one of the first responders to Super Typhoon “Yolanda”. Therefore with or without EDCA, we can rely on the US for assistance during disasters.

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