Political Tidbits
Two issues in move vs Lopezes
By Belinda Olivares-Cunanan
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 01:53:00 05/08/2008
MANILA, Philippines—In the fight of the administration of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo against the Lopezes on the rates of Manila Electric Co. (Meralco), I think the public, which has long suffered steep power rates, would be sympathetic to the administration. The public perception is that there are a lot of hidden costs being loaded into the very complicated customer’s bill by the power distributor.
The two Supreme Court decisions that virtually accused Meralco of deception of the consumers can be recalled. President Arroyo has sought to rally business groups in the crusade, now lodged before the Energy Regulatory Commission, to obtain lower power rates, and I feel she should be supported on this, as high power rates have been a big deterrent to foreign investments.
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But there is a separate issue: the desire to wrest control of Meralco that Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) president Winston Garcia seems to want to do. Here the public would be ambivalent, as the alternative to control and management by the Lopezes may not be attractive owing to perceptions of bureaucratic inefficiency.
Moreover, there is the perception that this move is being made because the Lopezes have never been shy about handling power—be it the one emanating from its control of the utilities firm or from the ownership and operation of a giant radio-TV network. Thus, few would believe that Garcia’s move against Meralco is not coordinated with the Palace, and that it’s not an attempt to bring the Lopezes to their knees, so to speak. Besides, the GSIS chief is known to be a power player himself and at times his agenda does not come across as clear to the public.
It would be a pity to muddle the very valid issue of high power rates with politics.
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Like millions of others, I was glued Wednesday to the thrilling primary race between US Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. While the outcome in Indiana and North Carolina had been predicted, few guessed it would be so close in Indiana. As this column was being written, Clinton’s two-percentage-point winning margin appeared quite shaky as votes from the Obama stronghold close to the Chicago area where he grew up trickled in.
Obama’s landslide victory in North Carolina reinforced the fact that the black votes have been almost totally for him, but he also garnered one-third of the white working class votes, belying Clinton’s argument that she has a lock on that class of voters. Hillary and her husband Bill Clinton and daughter Chelsea, along with bigwigs of Indiana, campaigned furiously, but the race was still so tight she almost lost. Such is the phenomenal strength of Obama.
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Clinton, a Yale law graduate and considered one of the top 200 lawyers in America even prior to her entry into politics, is definitely the more experienced candidate, with a better grasp of economic issues and tough steely nerves. She would definitely make a better president. But there’s no question that her rival, 12 years her junior and a neophyte in the Senate, has captivated the vast majority of democratic voters. His win in North Carolina has now made “the math of delegate votes increasingly daunting” for Clinton. She trails by 150 delegate votes, but there are about 200 “super delegates” who can vote independently of the primary results and remain uncommitted. But she has vowed to fight through the five remaining primaries. If neither candidate secures the 2,025 delegate votes needed to win the nomination, the party’s leaders might move to have a decision before the August convention.
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I’m not an Obama fan, but I recognize his most phenomenal assets: his charisma and silken tongue. He’s one of the best orators on the world stage today, so that his battle-cry of “Change” does not sound like an empty shibboleth, but a stirring platform even if its specifics are nebulous. Moreover, in warring against two political families that have ruled Washington in succession, the Clintons and the Bushes, he has projected himself as a David fighting the Goliaths of the establishment, and this makes him very attractive to students and liberals.
There’s also the personal background of Obama and his wife Michele as bright African-Americans who had to work their way to a Harvard education, the essence of the American dream.
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My write-up on the success of the peace process in Northern Ireland, whose merits the British and Philippines governments would like to emulate in the Mindanao peace talks, was not complete. Recent Manila visitor Meg Munn of the House of Commons was careful to stress that while the peace agreement forged in April 1998 between the UK and the Irish Republic and political parties there is holding up quite well, the main conflict issue has not yet been resolved. This is, whether Northern Ireland wants a final reunification with the Irish Republic or to remain with Britain, whose presence there began in 1969. This issue has to be submitted to a referendum in Northern Ireland and a separate one is to be held in the Irish Republic, which will vote on whether to approve the changes in its Constitution vis-à-vis its former territory.
In July 2005, the Irish Republican Army that had been known for many violent episodes in the past announced the end of its campaign and promised a complete decommissioning of its weapons. Following the March 2007 elections, the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Fein formed a government two months later, and the following July the British Army closed its mission in Northern Ireland. Munn noted that a lot of patience had to be exercised during the decades when peace was being pursued, and while there were some violations and even violent episodes, there were also many confidence-building measures prompted by the desire of the protagonists to attain peace. There are lessons there for the resolution of the secessionist conflicts here.
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