The Market Monitor Minding the Nation's Business
Lately, there are concerns that Sen. Grace Poe could be silently blocking the bid of the new administration to have President Duterte vested with special powers to help him solve the grave traffic woes of Metro Manila.
Poe’s Committee on Public Services is hearing the plea now being presented by Transportation Secretary Art Tugade.
The last word on this issue is that Poe has put her committee hearings on the proposed emergency powers for the President “on hold,” pending a detailed list of projects that the government would implement to address the traffic crisis.
In a statement, Poe said that “the Executive branch is in a hurry to pass the emergency powers bill, but based on our hearings, we have learned that the Department of Transportation (DOTr) and the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) have yet to come up with concrete projects under the emergency powers bill.”
To the layman, that means letting the petition languish in limbo. We hope this is not the good senator’s intention. Without such powers, Metro Manilans will continue to suffer from the traffic inferno. They will be blaming the President and Secretary Tugade for this, not Senator Poe.
Among her strong statements on this matter was, “Duterte’s emergency powers won’t come without conditions.” Poe said that there should be “clear-cut parameters” that would constitute an emergency.
Poe enumerated the conditions when her committee began its deliberations on several measures that would grand the President emergency powers for traffic.
“Giving the President emergency powers necessarily raises concerns about the concentration of powers in one person, as this could easily be abused. There are fears that if we grant emergency powers for this issue, then we open the floodgates to granting emergency powers for other so-called ‘crisis’ or ‘emergencies’,” she said.
“We must, therefore, pose important questions on the extent of those powers. For instance, we must have clear-cut parameters as what constitutes as an emergency.
“Second, we must be clear on what those emergency powers will be used for and whether they can effectively address the problems. It is important for us to define and quantify the objectives of the bills,” the senator added.
The public’s question is, “who are those conditions supposed to please and satisfy?”
It is the senator’s misfortune that she has just come out of an election contest where the new President who is asking for those emergency powers handed her defeat in the polls. We cannot fault the public for thinking that this is a good way to get back at the victor.
Campaign promise
The Manila Electric Co. (Meralco), the country’s biggest power distributor, announced last week that power rates are set to go down this month due to lower transmission charges.
Meralco announced a reduction of P0.0451 per kilowatt hour (kWh) in overall rates this month to P8.46/kWh, which is lower by P0.09/kWh compared to September last year’s P8.55/kWh.
According to media reports, the lower rate translates to a reduction of around P9 in the electricity bill of a household with a monthly consumption of 200 kwh; P13.53 for those consuming 300 kWh; P18 for 400 kWh and P22.55 for 500 kWh, according to Meralco.
This development made many remember a promise made by Mr. Duterte during the last campaign: that he will lower the cost of electricity to benefit ordinary Filipinos. It showed that power-rate cuts are doable and the President has what it takes to make them happen.
It also proved that the public can benefit a lot when the President begins to exercise political will in the power sector in the same way he has in the war against drugs.
That will has to be applied firmly in the government’s bid to put reforms in this sector fast. While private-industry players know that change is also coming in the power sector, they are expected to put up resistance and drag the effort. This is expected. The coming changes are sure to take them out of their comfort zone.
Once the President finds time to address power-sector issues, the President should discover that all he has to do is to back the faster implementation of these reforms. The industry reforms will lead to lower, more reasonable and affordable power rates.