THE LOPEZ Lopez family-controlled Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) has come under heavy siege from key government sectors, trade chambers and consumer groups in a multi-pronged offensive to force it to bring down high electricity costs.

The new clash between the government and the Lopez group foreshadows a titanic struggle over electric power, the life-blood of Philippine industry and the daily lives of Filipinos. The rates involve 11 million residential electricity users, comprising 92 percent of electricity used by all households.

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I WAS AT THE Bredco port the other day to make reservation for my vehicle to Iloilo. I talked with Bredco director Willy Au and port manager Ramon Trocio.

Looking at the number of big loaded cargo trucks, ten-wheeler and others waiting to be boarded, I asked my two friends how many trips a day make these roll-on, roll-off boat.

I was told, normally, they have 18 trips a day, nine going to Iloilo and nine coming to Bacolod. And all of these are full of vehicles, most of them with goods.

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YouTube is an interesting phenomena. Created in mid-February 2005, it is a video sharing website where anyone can upload, view and share video clips. By August 2006, according to Wikipedia citing a Wall Street Journal article, YouTube was already hosting about 6.1 million videos (requiring about 45 terabytes of storage space), and had about 500,000 user accounts. Wikipedia adds that as of April 9, 2008, a YouTube search returns about 83.4 million videos and 3.75 million user channels.

Just recently, a 2-minute video was uploaded at YouTube by a user registered as Malefecent1, who joined the video-sharing community on April 27, 2008. It showed how a suspected male fixer exacted PhP5,195.00 from his victim. The suspect can be seen somewhere in the video wearing a blue shirt with white stripes. According to Malefecent1: “He is an ex-LTO Iloilo employee who scams people through fixing. He was already fired from the LTO for this yet he continues to perpetrate his craft through the help of his mistress… who sits at the helm of the supplies office at the LTO.”

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I TEXTED my good friends, Sr. Isyang and Sr. Emma, whose Susi Foundation serves farmers’ rice cooperatives in Southern Luzon, to ask if there are extraordinary stories in their area related to the current global and local rice price crisis. These award-winning nuns-turned-farmers have been working in a farm setting in Quezon province for the past 30 years.Sr. Isyang texted a reply: “Effect of high rice prices here is families spend less on merienda, parties & other nonessential expense. Dey can still eat 3x a day, rural kc. Small rice mills have less stocks coz of cost. Less going 2 cockpits of those saving 4 food. No xtra-ord stories.”

Our common friend, Ika Laurel Loewen, who was based in Germany for a long time, is back for good to produce food and give hope through her little farm in the village of Laurel in Tagkawayan, Quezon. (She was my former schoolmate at St. Scholastica’s College who later left for Spain to study and then settled in the land of Beethoven.) This great-grandniece of national hero Jose Rizal has named her little place “Mi Retiro.” Sure, it’s a place for rest but definitely not for retirement, especially when there is a food crisis.

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MANILA Auxiliary Bishop Bernardino Cortez warns of violence and vulgarity in media. According to the good bishop: “Giving undue importance to violence and vulgarity are the things that should be avoided by the mass media. . . . Although both are realities of life, sometimes they are given undue prominence which gives the idea that the media may even be promoting them.”

Well said, Bishop Cortez. I have been stressing this point for a long, long time, but precisely we should remember that it is not only violence and vulgarity but the promotion of lies and half-truths which may be attributed to some people in media who have abandoned their objectiveness for the sake of sensationalism.

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THE PRESIDENT needs good economic advisers.

The advice I got from her economic adviser Albay Gov. Joey Salceda was, prepare because the rice crisis will last a bit long.

I expected Gov. Salceda to tell the President, “Give people jobs.” That I did not read. The advice I read, came from opposition Sen. Loren Legarda. Loren said, “Jobs, not doleout.”

Many bishops opposed the President’s doleout to the poor. It will make them lose their independence and dignity, they said.

There are two models the President can learn from. One is from her father, the late President Diosdado Macapagal. Macapagal won in 1961 beating incumbent President Carlos Garcia.

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FIVE RICE producing countries in the Mekong River Delta are setting up a price-fixing cartel amid skyrocketing rice prices and shortages in Asia described by the United Nations as a “real global crisis.” The cartel is expected to isolate the Philippines from its Asian rice suppliers.

The proposed cartel, called Organization of Rice Exporting Countries (OREC), similar to the OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries), embrace Thailand, Vietnam, Burma, Cambodia and Laos, which have agreed in principle to form a bloc inside the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations designed to cement political and economic solidarity in the region.

The launching of the cartel initiative by Thailand, the world’s biggest rice exporter, could not have come at a worse time for the Asia-Pacific region, where 1.5 billion people, three times the population of Europe, live on less than $2 a day. The Asian Development Bank estimates that the very poorest people in the region spend 60 percent of their income on food and a further 15 percent on fuel, two basic commodities whose prices have risen relentless in the past few months.

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THOMAS Jasper Candole, now in his early 50s, used to be a military officer. He quit to become a pastor of a Protestant church in Iloilo City in the 1990s. Today, he has a bigger flock at the Capitol Hills Christian Church (near the House of Representatives), Quezon City.

We paid Pastor Candole, his wife Dalane and their dogs a visit last Thursday. Over lunch at the parsonage, he asked whether Iloilo City had improved in the past decade. Well, we could only say that the airport had fortunately gone world-class – but also gone out of the city to its new Sta. Barbara-Cabatuan site.

We refrained from bragging about the senselessly overpriced but unnecessary P480-million Infante flyover, which could only be matched by the proposed new city hall at the old, cramped Plaza Libertad site.

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I COULD not believe my eyes when I saw my latest Panay Electric Company (Peco) bill. It was almost double than the previous month’s bill despite the relatively low electric consumption of my household.

I examined the itemized Peco bill to find out which item took a sharp increase. And there it was: generation rates.

The culprit seems to be the so-called Automatic Generation Rates Adjustments (AGRA) mechanism which was approved by the Energy Regulatory Commission.

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WHILE WE commiserate with MCTC Judge Manuel G. Limsiaco Jr. for the disciplinary action made by the Supreme Court on him, we believe he should accept it as a move to improve the courts and him also. It is for the good of the country.

The courts must maintain their integrity and credibility which the Supreme Court must insist should be upheld.

When the courts lose their credibility and integrity, the law of the jungle follows. Who will believe the law?

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