Useless finger-pointing

Man at the Market

Jesse E.L. Bacon II

05/12/2008

If Mrs. Arroyo really wants to lead this country, then she should stop blaming everyone and everything but herself for the woes the country is in. No matter how she tries passing the buck to others the fact remains that the buck stops in her office no matter how unsavory and unpalatable it may be.

To recall, it was the administration who raised the ante of an impending rice shortage because domestic production is far below the domestic requirement, hence, the need to import to meet internal demands for the staple food. What followed was the steady increase in the price of rice and the diminishing supply of government subsidized rice.

Naturally, the people got frantic especially those from the marginalized sector. They started queuing for whatever supplies the government can offer them. At first, the administration basked in its able handling of the situation assuring all and sundry that everything’s under control.

But when Thailand and Vietnam, two of our sources of rice since we adopted the policy of not producing our domestic requirements anymore since this can easily be had in the world market, showed apprehension in selling to us our usual requirement, the administration got frantic as well. And as usual, when the Arroyo administration gets frantic it goes into publicity binge of blaming everyone as the cause of the problem notwithstanding the fact it is this administration that started it all.

So, last week the administration officially put the blame on media for the frenzy about a rice shortage gripping the country. The administration says there is no rice shortage after all and that all this talk about a shortage in the staple food is but media’s undoing.

While at the peak of its finger pointing as to who to blame for the rice crisis, the Arroyo administration went ballistic also against the Lopez family-owned Manila Electric Co. as the culprit why electricity rates in the Meralco franchise area are too high. Rabid Arroyo fanatic, Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago, even went to the extent of publicly suggesting that Meralco should be bombed for being the hub of a syndicate.

This columnist joins the call in probing Meralco’s exorbitant rates but abhors suggestions like the one Santiago proffered last week. We view Santiago’s suggestion simply as a display of lunacy just like when she accused the Chinese people of inventing corruption which she aired at the height of the Senate investigation into the highly overpriced National Broadband Network deal with China’s ZTE Corp.

So much Meralco bashing then followed. Everything went haywire and the Arroyo administration appears not to know anymore on how to extricate itself from the mess it created when it tangled with Meralco as the cause of all the woes gripping Manilans nowadays. The Arroyo administration even conveniently evaded the fact that Meralco rates were not pegged by the company but by a government agency that is more interested in approving increases in power rates and the prices of petroleum products instead of arresting their rise.

But certainly there is limit to one’s patience. When full page newspaper ads started to see print in mainstream broadsheets last week supposedly showing in graphic figures the generation rates charged by state-owned National Power Corp. (Napocor) and by those independent power producing suppliers that are closely identified with the Lopezes, the Arroyo administration cried foul.

The ads took exception to insinuations that Meralco is padding (tong pats was the term used) its generation rate. It claimed that not a single centavo is being added by Meralco to the generation cost that Napocor charges the distribution firm which is the highest among its power suppliers. The ad instead insinuated that Napocor’s generation cost is higher because “tong pats” were added in the purchase of essential items in generating power such as coal. The plot now thickens. The diatribe unleashed by the administration is now being met head-on by the Lopez family. Abangan!

(jelbacon@yahoo.com for reactions)

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