Bayan Muna counsel did right at SC

I would like to comment on the article of Oscar Franklin Tan (Opinion, 1/23/14) alleging that Bayan Muna “bungled the anti-Meralco case” in the Supreme Court oral arguments.

I am a middle-income lawyer hurting from the high electricity rates and I commend Bayan Muna for promptly filing the petition which became the basis for a temporary restraining order of the Supreme Court against Meralco’s hefty price hikes. I listened to the oral arguments all throughout and despite the grueling interpellation of the justices, Rep. Neri Colmenares did not detract from the basic merits of the Bayan Muna petition.

I see no fault in the admission of Bayan Muna lawyer-representatives that they are not familiar with the technical questions on the Electric Power Industry Reform Act and the complex power industry. Only few lawyers hired by big power firms can claim to be familiar with and experts on this matter.

I vehemently disagree with Tan that Bayan Muna has presented a convoluted case. Colmenares presented a clear and strong case of grave abuse of discretion committed by the ERC; he showed that despite the three highly irregular and unprecedented occurrences, it hastily approved Meralco’s huge rate hikes without public hearing and investigation. These red flags are the simultaneous and unscheduled shutdown of power plants, Meralco’s instruction to Therma Mobile to bid the highest price of P62/kWh 25 times, which spiked spot market prices, and the unprecedented high price hikes of P4.15/kWh.

Colmenares argued that the petitioners have an actual case that points to the unconstitutionality of Section 6 of Epira. Epira’s Section 6—which provides for the  deregulation of generation charges and the automatic pass-through of generation cost—is already inflicting grave injury to the consuming public. Section 6 violates the 1987 Constitution’s provisions (1) that no person shall be deprived of property without due process and (2) that the State has mandates to prohibit or regulate monopolies and to intervene when common good demands.

Colmenares referred only to the constitutional attack on Section 29 of Epira, which provides for the deregulation of charges of suppliers, as having no actual case, and not the case against Section 6.

Thirteen years of Epira has only brought us an oligopoly of five major companies in power generation and monopolies in power transmission and distribution because of the high capital requirements of the power industry. Either the state prohibits or regulates monopolies and oligopolies in the power industry or it leaves us devoured by them in a privatized and deregulated pricing regime.

Bayan Muna, as I understand it, is seeking the renationalization and full regulation of the power industry because free market is a myth when monopoly or oligopoly dominates in an industry or economy.

Associate Justice Marvic Leonen may have misunderstood Bayan Muna when he stated that it now wants the free market to work.

Retail competition and open access as Epira’s condition for full deregulation of power generation won’t do any good in an industry controlled and manipulated by private monopoly and oligopoly.

Bayan Muna Rep. Carlos Zarate clearly delivered the point that the recourse to the Supreme Court is proper because under the Epira, only the Supreme Court can grant a TRO against any of its provisions and rule on the issues of grave abuse of discretion and constitutionality.

—MANEEKA ASISTOL SARZA,

Barangay Putatan,

Muntinlupa City,

maneeka.sarza@gmail.com