ERC should move on

After months of being on the hot seat, Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) Chairman Jose Vicente Salazar can now heave a sigh of relief after the Commission on Audit (COA) cleared him of any alleged irregularities in the audio-visual presentation (AVP) project for the agency. 

According to the COA report, the AVP project “was not consummated” and that no payments were made in connection with it.

In their report, COA Auditors Vivencio Quiambao Jr. and Supervising Auditor Flovita Felipe refuted allegations that the supposed award of the project was rigged.

Just to refresh the memory of our readers, Salazar’s woes began with an alleged suicide note.

The note was apparently written by a distraught ERC middle-management official who eventually shot himself to death.

In that alleged suicide note, the ERC official, Francisco Villa, Jr – who headed the bidding committee of the agency – accused Salazar of pressuring him to approve a contract.

Based on the alleged suicide note, the contract was rigged and that the official could no longer handle the pressure of having to sign it.

In an earlier column, we asked: How could he (Villa) claim to be forced to sign an anomalous contract when there was no contract to speak of? After all, the deceased official himself had recommended the failure of bidding, did he not?

It’s good that the COA publicly divulged the results of their investigation because people who have seen the details of the supposed controversial project could not believe that the ERC official would shoot himself over a non-existent contract related to a project whose bidding has failed.

According to them, there must have been other deeper reasons the official had to resort to killing himself.

The project is not a multimillion-peso project where interested officials stood to make a windfall from commissions.

This was a P300,000 project. Yes, three hundred thousand pesos worth.

According to the COA report, the bidding for the project failed twice, apparently because there were no takers.

After all, how can an outfit produce a quality audio-visual material at that price? According to our sources, that was why the project budget had to be raised to P490,000 after the first bidding failed.

It’s also good that Salazar stood his ground while other parties slithered like snakes to take advantage of the seeming chaos in the energy regulatory body to push their agenda.

Clearly, vested interests piggybacked on Salazar’s woes. In so doing, they have muddled up the issues and have further confused an already baffled public.

Going back to the COA report, it appears to vindicate Salazar’s stand. Here are the salient points of the report:

The amount set aside for Luis Morelos, the ERC consultant who was supposed to have been tapped for the AVP production, had been unutilized, thus, the amount would revert to ERC’s coffers “as the transaction did not materialize.”

The COA also pointed out that, “records would show that no payments were made to Mr. Morelos,” in reference to the AVP project.

Next, it noted that the reported Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) engaging Morelos for consultancy services with the ERC had been terminated two weeks after it was signed.

COA also pointed out that “no prospective bidders submitted their quotation for which it became a failure of bidding for the first posting in the Philippine Government Electronic Procurement System (PhilGEPS) site.

It further noted that a second posting was also declared “a failure” on grounds that “the preparation of the second terms of reference failed to indicate the passing rate which was a vital information to determine the most responsive quotation.”

Finally, COA pointed out that, “there were no further actions taken by the ERC after the two failed biddings.”

These are the findings of a third party tapped to investigate ERC in the wake of the outcry after Villa’ s death.

Hopefully, the ERC can now move forward with renewed confidence to address the pressing issues facing the power industry.

The infighting and finger pointing among the ERC commissioners will not make power cheaper and affordable for us, consumers

In the aftermath, we cannot blame Salazar for thinking of the chilling perils of being in public service. Sometimes the desire to serve may not be enough to stick around.