EDITORIAL - Power crisis: No one's fault but Noynoy's

When President Aquino said it would be the fault of Senator Serge Osmeña if the looming power crisis hits the country in summer as expected, he only proved Osmeña right in the first place. Osmeña has said Aquino understands nothing about power and criticized the president for allowing himself to be played by those who do not understand power either.

Aquino has to understand that what is at issue here are two kinds of power. The one that is expected to run low in summer is the power that lights up our homes and fires up the factories. What some people are proposing to give Aquino more of is presidential power. Electrical power and presidential power are not one and the same. They are two entirely different things.

Electrical power comes from plants that generate electricity. If you want more electricity, you build more plants to increase generating capacity. Presidential power, on the other hand, is political power. Political power can do many things, open many doors. One thing political power cannot do is generate electrical power. A dozen presidential orders may issue from political power in a day, but it still takes years to build a plant to generate more power.

In other words, Aquino can cloak himself with every conceivable additional power that he believes his presidency is still short of, but none of them can bring forth a power plant out of thin air. If a power plant takes, say, three years to build, that is how long it will be built. The swiftness of its construction does not rely on the swiftness with which Aquino can issue presidential orders. Extraordinary presidential powers cannot massage a power plant into existence out of thin air.

This is the reason why Osmeña, who understands the situation perfectly, is against giving Aquino more powers than he already has under the presidency. It is not as if Osmeña is afraid Aquino might use the extra powers on totally unrelated purposes, although that remains a distinct possibility. What Osmeña sees instead is the sheer futility of giving Aquino extra powers.

If the power crisis hits the country in summer as expected, it is not because the power of the presidency is sorely inadequate. It is because the existing generating capacity of the country is not enough to meet the power demand foreseen by that time. Why the country has not kept apace with projected power demands is not the fault of one senator. It is the fault of one lousy president.

The looming power crisis did not happen overnight. It built on itself over the years. President for already four years, Aquino cannot feign ignorance. In all of those years our population has not stopped growing. Bigger populations make for bigger power demands. Then there is the supposed economic boom that Aquino himself proudly takes credit for. A booming economy makes for bigger power demands. After four years of "noynoying" Aquino now wants more powers to achieve nothing?