Piggybacking on ERC woes

In the midst of chaos, some see danger. Many others see opportunity.

Amid the chaos that has rocked the Energy Regula­tory Commission (ERC), there appears to be unscrupulous parties that have found much opportunity to pursue their respective agenda. They ap­pear to be piggybacking on the ERC’s woes. In so doing, the have muddled up the issues and have further confused an already baffled public.

The ERC’s woes began with an alleged suicide note. The note was apparently written by a distraught mid­dle-management official who eventually shot himself to death.

In that alleged suicide note, the ERC official – who headed the bidding committee of the agency -accused Chairman Jose Vicente 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.

The note and the death of the ERC official rocked the ERC and stirred public anger.

That was until details of the supposed controversial note slowly surfaced in the wake of the current inquiry be­ing done by both the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) and the Commission on Audit (COA).

Based on information trickling out of the ERC, the alleged basis for the suicide was an “AVP.” The “AVP,” it turns out, was an audio-visual project. No, this is not a multi­million-peso project where in­terested officials stood to make a windfall from commissions.

This is a P300,000 project. Yes, three hundred thousand pesos worth. 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? Maybe, that was why the project budget had to be raised to P490,000 after the first bidding failed.

Still, the second bidding also failed.

The facts seem to stir more questions rather than put the matter to rest.

Why should an ERC offi­cial kill himself over a P300,000 project?

How could he claim to have been 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?

How could there be a contract when no bidder had qualified? How can claims of a rigged bidding be made?

We hope the investigating bodies would shed light on the matter soonest. Those who have seen the details of the supposed controversial “AVP” project cannot believe that the ERC official would shoot him­self over a non-existent con­tract related to a project whose bidding has failed.

There must be other, deeper reasons why the official had to resort to killing himself.

Did the late official want to accuse Chairman Salazar of wanting to make money from a P300,000 project? Again, this must be looked into thorough­ly. After all, how does one make a windfall from a project that cost only that much?

In the Philippines, the standard commission from a government project is said to be 10 percent. Would the ERC chairman want to make P30,000 from this project?

What if there was a prom­ise of a 50-50 sharing? Would the ERC chairman risk his ca­reer for a P150,000 commis­sion?

This is baffling and almost unbelievable. The ERC chair­man and the members of the commission are entitled to a lifetime pension equivalent to 100 percent of their last pay. It may be safe to presume that the ERC chairman makes about P200,000 a month today.

Would the ERC chairman risk losing a lifetime pension of P2.4 million annually (tax free, maybe?) for the sake of a one-time project commission of P150 thousand?

We are not defending Salazar. It is just that the details of that project are rather baf­fling.

Perhaps, it would have been better if the members of the media who reported on the suicide note had published the entire letter. Sources say that the alleged suicide note was about 10-pages long and that the matter of the alleged anomalous “AVP” contract merited nothing more than a few sentences in that letter.

Now, other parties are rid­ing on that unfortunate death. Last week, a news item report­ed that a leftist politician had insinuated that the ERC offi­cial may have also committed suicide due to pressure for him to approve a contract involving the country’s largest distribu­tion utility, Meralco.

As it turns out, the state­ment by the leftist politician was a clear case of piggyback­ing – capitalizing on public an­ger to advance a political agen­da.

The ERC official who killed himself chaired a bid­ding committee that procured office equipment, supplies and services. He was not involved in matters related to the re­quirements of the giants in the power sector.

That leftist politician was either displaying ignorance or was plain and simple mali­cious.

The faster the investi­gators come up with their official findings on that un­fortunate “AVP” project, the sooner we can prevent inter­ested parties from using the death of the ERC official for their agenda.