The good news is that our worst fears of cheating in the May 2007 senatorial elections have been confirmed. The election protest of Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III proved it. By recovering over 257,401 votes on 100% of contested precincts against the 19,292 national margin of his closest rival, without doubt, Pimentel won his protest leading by as much as 238,109 votes, or over 12 times the original lead.

The bad news is that a monkey wrench was thrown into the cogs that spin the wheels of justice. A counter protest was filed alleging cheating was perpetrated on a grander scale, in, of all places, Metro Manila and other, nearby urban centers. Covering over a substantial third of the country, the counter protest alleges that Pimentel, an opposition candidate, cheated in even greater numbers than those fraudulently registered in Maguindanao.

Last August 2009, in an essay entitled “The Senator from Sultan Kudarat,” we wrote of massive fraud in Maguindanao where the senatorial results were highly unlikely. Candidates hardly known in Mindanao ended up on top while candidates from the area were last. While not enough to legitimize the illegitimate, for those battling for the last rung, the aberration is enough to violate the Senate’s integrity.

On July 2007 Benjamin Abalos proclaimed Miguel Zubiri as the 12th senator where his lead against Pimentel was 19,292 votes after Maguindanao results were counted. This included votes from 197 empty ballot boxes from Sultan Kudarat where canvassers counted the non-existent.

The 198th ballot box was not less intriguing. Inside, officials found 11 fake ballots. Empty ballot boxes constitute an anomaly, but fake ballots constitute fraud.

The jurisprudential imperatives to nullify fruits of fraud are based on Hadji Loong versus Bensaudid Tulawie, House of Representatives Electoral Tribunal (HRET) case no. 92-003, Sept.26, 1994 where results were nullified after municipal-wide results were due to massive fraud. Among precedent considerations was the fact that “vital election documents like Election Returns, Tally Sheets, and detachable coupons were not found inside the ballot boxes”.

Based on the 2007 proclamation, the 12th senatorial candidate received 33,888 votes in Sultan Kudarat while the 13th 2,791. Applying Loong versus Tulawie and netting 2,791 from 33,888, the resulting 31,097 determined as null completely erases a margin of 19,292 at least 1.6 times over. This more than compensates for votes representing Sultan Kudarat’s share in what underlies the 12th candidate’s national margin.

This shows that in Sultan Kudarat alone, counting empty and fake ballots spuriously determined the 12th senator. When corrected, the results show Pimentel actually leads Zubiri by 238,109 votes.

To protect his incumbency, Zubiri filed a counter protest alleging massive nationwide fraud perpetrated in Pimentel’s favor.

Any delay favors the incumbent. Worse, in a tribunal comprised of presumably three apolitical judicial members and six with heavy dosages of political and partisan DNA, even arithmetic surrenders to contaminants. Add a dose of political vendetta and the brew turns toxic. Where justice’s wheels grind ever so slowly, this is important.

Fortunately, the rules on protests prevent prosecution on the basis of allegations where these result in delays that make a mockery of suffrage.

In a protest, analytical comparisons are achieved by taking the ratio between the sum of net gains of each protestant against each’s total number of precincts contested. The resulting ratio illustrates the number of votes impacting on a margin of 19,292 votes where one either whittles or adds to the margin. To maintain an incumbency, whether fraudulently acquired or not, one simply delays by expanding the number of precincts contested.

To protect against dilatory tactics, the Senate Electoral Tribunal (SET) carves out 25% as pilot precincts to represent 100%. In Zubiri’s counter protest, his 25% subset validated, not Zubiri’s contention of fraud, but rather, it confirmed that Pimentel’s victory was indeed the result of the 2007 exercise. The 12th senator was Pimentel and not Zubiri.

Unfortunately, politics remains a toxic pollutant. The SET recently decided to prolong Zubiri’s counter protest by encroaching on the remaining 75%. Never mind the mathematical improbabilities noted by SET member Justice Antonio Carpio.

In his dissenting opinion Justice Carpio wrote, “In Zubiri’s pilot precincts, consisting of 18,227 precincts, he was able to recover only 11,948 votes, subject to adjustments, translating to 0.66 average vote recovered per precinct. His projected total recovery is only 33,794 votes in his remaining 75% non-pilot protested precincts, or a total projected recovery of 45,742 votes in all his 70,607 counter-protested precincts. On the other hand, Pimentel’s net recovery in all his protested precincts is 257,401 votes. Even if we deduct the number of votes contained in the fake ballots, Zubiri’s projected net recovery cannot successfully overcome the net recovery posted by Pimentel.”

The political play is obvious. The insidious alpha and omega of the counter protest is delay. That and the incessant injustice inflicted on our rights of suffrage.

Armed with an 85% trust rating, Pres. Benigno Aquino III in his State of the Nation address confirmed what many fear. By virtually debunking dubious drum-beating and claims of competence, rose-colored statistics and an economic renaissance conjured by Gloria Arroyo’s economic managers, Aquino enumerated how the country had been systematically plundered.

From the president’s list, we’ve singled out the issue of financial governance, specifically, the initiative on anti-smuggling. And upon it we’ve placed a face albeit one painfully etched with deep lines and a frown.

It is not difficult to sympathize with the local flour industry. For too long the government has been unsympathetic, favoring instead, smuggled and dumped importations.

We’ve written about this before. Former Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel sounded the alarm and even called for a congressional inquiry.

In studies by the Haceteppe University in Ankara, Turkey, the Department of Food Hygiene and Technology of the Istanbul University and the Department of Food Technology of the Balikesir University in Turkey, Ochratoxins were found in 81% of analyzed samples and on those exported to Asia, 21.7% were contaminated with Aflatoxins.

Aflatoxins and Ochratoxins are Mycotoxins. Mycotoxins are toxic products that enter the food chain from fungi that colonize crops. Both are deadly carcinogens. Once ingested both resist decomposition and digestion. Both cannot be destroyed by cooking or freezing.

Unfortunately, cash registers peal louder than alarm bells. Trade officials have declared Turkish flour safe.

When commissions are earned for importations, nobody cares about toxicity. The rotting rice piled in National Food Authority (NFA) warehouses from recent over-importations is just one example.

Warped as it is, government indifference is typical. Inferior Turkish flour is used on lower-end products by the lower-end market. Add to that Arroyo’s hunger index and the increasing number subsisting on “pagpag”- the nouvelle cuisine that characterizes Arroyo economics. If the destitute can eat pre-eaten garbage, who cares about toxins?

More than the issue of public health, issues of smuggling – whether outright or technical - were accorded even lesser importance. Note that less than two years ago, under the noses of customs officials at the Port of Manila, five containers filled with Turkish wheat flour were allowed entry despite protests from local millers who said the shipments were either misdeclared or smuggled.

Never mind that previously 10 containers whose contents were misdeclared as starch but were later discovered to be smuggled flour were off-loaded in Ozamiz City.

Faced with government dereliction, at wits end, last May local flour millers asked the government to investigate the dumping and technical smuggling of cheap Turkish flour. Submitting to Malacañang’s Review Committee on Smuggling and Tax Evasion Cases documents detailing Turkish flour smuggling, the businessmen virtually lined up the ducks.

Aside from inferior-grade Turkish wheat, local millers revealed that of 86,000 metric tons imported from Turkey last year, as much as 19,000 were undervalued - the equivalent of Php 16.9 million in tariff revenue losses.

For the first quarter of 2010, they also reported that 80 containers brought in through the Port of Batangas were declared at 88.4% lower than statutory values under the Value Reference system (VRIS) set by the Office of the Commissioner of Customs.

Given an 88.4% undervaluation, all established by a single importer, over Php 4.6 million in tariff revenues was lost in one quarter. By the May elections, five months into 2010, at least Php 51 million had been lost through the Turkish importations of at least eight companies.

The report filed with Malacañang show two of the eight used the Manila International Container Port (MICP) while a third used both the MICP and the Port of Manila.

One imported 8,592 metric tons but under-declared by as much as 37.30%. Another imported 7,086 metric tons but under-declared 30%. A third imported 10,488 metric tons but under-declared by 23.3%. In each instance, over Php 13.8 million, Php 6.9 and another Php 6.9 million respectively might have been cheated from the government.

For the accumulated losses, simply do the math. Turkish flour is assessed with a 7% duty and a 12% value added tax upon entry. Given volumes imported between 2008 and 2009, undervaluations would have resulted in over Php 50 million in lost revenues. Add the 2010’s Php 51 million and one sees the importance of Pres. Aquino’s anti-smuggling initiative.

Yummy. Because we’ve over-imported rice now rotting in our warehouses, we might as well add appropriately qualified side dishes. Low grade flour is used for cheap pandesal, breading mixes for hard-boiled eggs and other flour-crusted street food. When flavored with toxins and smuggled through mis-declarations we would in effect be eating imported “pagpag”.

Second servings, anyone?

Perhaps believing that he is comfortably ensconced in familiar surroundings and safe in his element as a resurrected media practitioner, the former vice president, who had only recently perched within a heartbeat of Gloria Arroyo, must now contend with diametrically opposing forces that pull on him.

Returning to the Fourth Estate that traditionally plays a fiscalizing role on government, especially one as brazen as the previous just passed, former vice president Noli de Castro must come to terms with what he has been transformed into. The aftertaste of being not simply an influential figure in the Arroyo administration but one that until lately virtually insured its longevity, de Castro cannot escape being accountable for responsibilities vested upon him since 2004.

Accountability does not end when incumbency ends. It ends with closure. As a media professional, de Castro knows that it is accountability that founds the basis for the Fourth Estate in any democratic society.

It is not difficult to imagine that de Castro might well be conflicted. Noli de Castro is a media man. But former vice president Manuel de Castro was Arroyo’s housing czar, the Chairman of the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC), and vice chairman of the Home Guaranty Corporation (HGC), the agency at the center of the Smokey Mountain scandal.

It was the HGC with the National Housing Authority (NHA) which the HUDCC head simultaneously chairs that had, just days before the end of Arroyo’s incumbency, a pending memorandum of agreement (MOA) and a compromise agreement with a contractor stipulating among others considerable remuneration of as much as Php 4.46 billion - payment critics claim would settle all and sundry legal obligations.

Couple with those the immense responsibilities of de Castro’s preeminent position as the second highest official in the republic and we see that he might well be considered integral to the deal. Far from the collateral variable spin city punsters paint him to be, in real politick his office carries the weight of the vice presidency.

To be fair, de Castro denied that any agreement was in force. In his radio program, he asked, “What is my offense? Was there any signing of documents?” He said there was “no agreement and plan to sign any compromise agreement”. “That is not on our agenda and there is not enough time” referring to the then imminent end of the Arroyo term.

He added that the drafts were still in the technical group level and he had not seen these. Drafts needed HGC board approval.

Because the new administration was ushered in on the theme of anti-corruption and accountability, let us invoke both. First dwelling on broad strokes and from there working up to specificity let us ask what should have been asked.

One, given the contractor’s financial capacity then and now, should authorities not have reconciled those with the project’s requisites given that the state needed to put up the capital to complete the project when these had originally been part of the contractor’s responsibilities?

Two, it was reported that of the Php 1.7 billion claimed against the government, Php 800 million had been paid by the NHA without Commission on Audit clearances. Why then was payment made? As NHA chairman, did the former vice president know this?

Three, it was reported that completed construction works had amounted to only Php 211 million. While it is a matter of valuations and the comprehensive bill might have included a host of other expenses, the exponential difference between Php 211 million and the eventual billing of Php 1.7 billion compels serious, prolonged and profound scrutiny that should have raised red flags at the very least.

Four, there are reports that a premature endorsement to Gloria Arroyo for the payment by the NHA of a total of Php 4.46 billion was made. If this is true, who made this endorsement and upon what basis was the endorsement given when proposed agreements or MOAs were still pending with technical working groups?

From Php 21 million in hamburgers and takeout to midnight deals and appointments, the exiting administration seems to have left a trail of dirt and mud as it scurried to the Batasan Hills. Accountability demands from those with remnant decency, if not contrition then, at the very least, the truth. Whether from a sound booth or from the witness stand, someone must come clean.

It was four in the afternoon. The monsoon rains of the last two weeks had stopped and its ominous clouds scattered as the afternoon sun burned through, casting a golden hue that would soon turn bright crimson like blood, later to darken as shadows lengthened and then disappeared.

The young general strode to the large balcony window of his white wooden mansion in Cavite el Viejo. From the receiving room where he planned battles, he walked to where he would see what was worth dying for.

His rayadillo, with its diagonal weave, was crisp and immaculate. Its brass buttons, long left unpolished in the field, and its miniature chevrons and medals were now gleaming. From his side, a saber hung. Though now sheathed, it was a deadly witness to too many wars won and lost.

From the balcony window, the young general faced the people gathered outside waving banners, swords and muskets. His gaze was first on the immediate, scanning each face for a glow that reflected an anticipation that tomorrow would be a new day.

And then towards a future that only the mind's eye could see he looked beyond the fields that had been his family's source of livelihood.

It was time. Emilio Aguinaldo soon gripped a pole with a magnificent silken tricolor banner at its other end. It was the first time that the colors were unfurled, not as a field banner as it had flown recently, but, as the flag of a sovereign republic.

The sacred cloth had earlier been a banner at the battle of Alapang. It was brought back from Hong Kong where it was sewn by Marcela de Agoncillo, Delfina Herbosa de Natividad, and Lorenza Agoncillo, Marcela’s daughter. From fine satin purchased along Powell Street and later sewn in a house on Morrison Hill in Hong Kong, the sewing had taken five short days.

Soon after, it quickly saw battle. Aguinaldo’s revolutionary army had repulsed the Spanish royal marines at Alapang. Along the bay's shores, a typhoon drenched the province, blowing away remnant smoke from the burning Spanish garrison. But the cleansing had done more than that. Rainwater diluted colonial blood spilled along rock and dirt eventually forcing these into earth where it did not belong.

In the ensuing days, other Spanish forces were routed in Bataan, Cavite, Pampanga, Laguna, Batangas, Tayabas and Bulacan. In the old walled city, the Spanish were trapped within ancient stones and by their decaying hubris. Soon only Manila and the port of Cavite remained under Spanish control.

As the crowd cheered, Aguinaldo waved the flag. A field of blue dotted with miniature white flowers stitched over a field of red. An immaculate white triangle. Three hand-drawn six-pointed golden stars that unified the islands into a nation. And a golden sunburst, the mythical sun with a human face with each resplendent ray for those first eight provinces that defied Spain.

His pulse rose and dampness came to his eyes. The young general had stood defiantly against older and larger men who did not treat him well, thinking his youth was a weakness.

But they were mistaken. Few, oppressed and vulnerable, ever defied an empire that ruled more than half of the world for centuries.

As the cheering reached a crescendo, solemnity ever so slowly took over as a declaration was read.

Aguinaldo's highest adviser then was Ambrosio Rianzares Bautista. Reading the Act of the Declaration of Independence would be his last official duty. After today, a paralytic, from Batangas named Apolinario Mabini, would take his place.

Suddenly, the band outside played a stirring melody. At first it was rhythmic, pounding with pomp and pageantry. As it played, it turned grand and glorious. Drawing to a close, a crescendo rose and then fell as the melody invoked the songs of souls long gone.

The "Marcha Filipina Magdalo", played by the band of San Francisco de Malabon, was a march composed by Julian Felipe, a composer from Cavite. It was written in just six days and completed on June 11, 1898. Felipe would later change the name to "Marcha Nacional Filipina". One year later, on Aug. 1899, a young soldier named Jose Palma would compose a poem entitled "Filipinas". Filipinas would later be used as the lyrics of the anthem providing eloquence to what had then stirred passions.

On the 12th day of the sixth month in 1898, a new nation was born. The most beautiful the world had ever seen. A sovereign nation named Filipinas. Our Filipinas.


Dean de la Paz sits as an independent member of the Board of Directors of one of the Philippine's oldest banks and is a senior consultant to a government financial institution. He is program director for financial education at a UK-based university where he is also a professor of finance, strategic management and business policy.

Plotters, potential putschists and the pugnacious should stand down. Losers and others, listen up. From a divisive democratic exercise what tinderbox tempests turn and twist in teapots should settle as Bostonian tea parties that fall prey to reckless adventurism may negate what fate and fortune has laid out for the next presidency.

For the next president the economy seems to be headed for a quick upswing. Never mind the cacophony from the congressional inquisition cum workshop cum flea circus cum comedy night and incidentally, cum canvassing body. Never mind also insidious innuendo foreboding tax increases due to the fiscal improprieties under Gloria Arroyo. The near-horizon landscape is quickly blooming for a presidential honeymoon period.

Benigno Aquino III catalyzes optimism and resurrects our self-respect. It is after all a rare chance when planets align and a second opportunity presents itself to right wrongs.

Call it the Aquino honeymoon of a hundred days, or call it fate’s welcome mat. The signs listed hereunder are all good.

Last week Goldman Sachs announced that the economy was recovering. Despite warnings of higher taxes which impede recovery, the global declaration augurs well for Aquino. Other rating agencies cannot be far behind and the chorus serves as an invitation for much-needed foreign investment, the taming of interest rates and the reduction in the cost of foreign capital.

Moreover, within weeks of the new president’s installation, enough to alleviate power tariffs and long blackouts, long prayed-for rains should bring hydroelectric plants to adequate capacities in place of the more expensive fossil-fired facilities now running

Timely ASEAN influences have also kicked in. Note recent gas pump price reductions. Other than the effects of fuel mixes, the junking of the heavy-handed 3% oil import tax Arroyo inflicted rationalizes fuel pricing. Regional competitive influences compelled its abolition thus benefiting power generators, the transport industry and an economy dependent on imported fuels.

Gloss domestic product (GDP) registered a growth of 7.3% for the first quarter following frontloaded tax payments and an average inflation rate of 4.3%. Resulting more from external factors than Arroyo’s policies, 7.3% is from the global economic recovery that jumpstarts manufacturing productivity (hence lower inflation), increases remittances from external economies recovering on the sly and increases consumer spending from that. Add also increased business confidence from the much-anticipated exit of Gloria Arroyo.

On that aspect, Aquino’s anti-corruption agenda is on target given the employment and economic welfare corruption denies and business gains lost to greed in high places.

7.3% is one of the highest considering virtual stagnancy coming from 2009’s 0.80%. Applying Okun’s Law (an economic rule of thumb) on employment generation, 7.3% should create approximately twice as much employment as previous periods under Arroyo.

The typical observation that Arroyo’s numbers do not translate to perceivable welfare should not apply to Aquino. Dissipated election uncertainties and resurgent confidence impact positively. Note how Standard Chartered now sees a year-end growth rate of 5.9% from 3.3%.

If 7.3% were a fluke, at 3.3% under Aquino, employment growth would still be positive (around 1.10%) compared to Arroyo’s historic underemployment rate of close to 20% (up from 18.2% from 2009) and her hunger index of one out every four.

Note the quarterbacking prospects on the monetary front. The European debt crisis has so far been a Black Swan event that keeps Fed rates down despite pressures to increase it towards year-end as U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Shalom Bernanke has maintained unusually low overnight lending rates from 0% to 0.25% as a crisis recovery measure.

Other than greater access to investment capital, needless to say this has a positive indirect impact on us. Domestic rates will likewise remain low for now.

Recently monetary authorities rejected tenders of 3.914 % pegging policy rates at 3.75% for the benchmark 91-day Treasury bill. A low rate regime allows domestic producers greater access to credit and the continued strength of the peso (which is likely to stay strong for the next 100 days) rewards the critical agriculture sector where inputs cost less and margins widen.

Moreover, recovery is likewise seen to be unimpeded by predatory taxation as Aquino would likely not introduce new tax burdens in his first 100 days.

The interest rate scenario coupled with Aquino’s taxation prospects combine to temper inflation. Prospects are bright and noisemakers should stand down. We have presidential legitimacy.

Now all Aquino has to sweat are the small stuff - where to stay, when to quit smoking and a creeping rodent infestation in Batasan Hills.


Dean de la Paz sits as an independent member of the Board of Directors of one of the Philippine's oldest banks and is a senior consultant to a government financial institution. He is program director for financial education at a UK-based university where he is also a professor of finance, strategic management and business policy.

It is not difficult to understand the attraction of old literature. While plots and themes might well be crusted cliché from years of adaptation and constant copy, where prose and form are dated and anachronistic, these turn timeless whenever they take us to other times and other places.

Old literature is time travel without the burden of lining up for immigration officers or even the luxury of airport lounges. There is literature’s charm where it turns into a virtual time machine that transports us to different places and different lives.

Indeed the value of literature might be far more profound, but one does not have to go far. Simply read from Ayn Rand to Bram Stoker sentence by sentence - the latter with Hollywood playing in one’s mind.

Never mind scholarship or pretense. The magic works, the enchantment enriching. More in this age of multimedia and merchandising. Novelized, even Toy Story takes us from celluloid imagery into cerebral imagination and beyond. Upon the flip of a page books transport to worlds we’ve never been to. Who cares if it is through the cardboard-carpeted service elevator more than the scenic lift with its panoramic sights?

That we leave terra firma, that is important. Whatever works.

The journey can begin with Dr. Seuss or even Cam Jansen. My eight-year old daughter was easily spellbound and learned to fly that way. After all, there is the seminal version of Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, or The Lord of the Rings as well as the subsequent novelization of High School Musical. Last week it was Lionel Bart’s Oliver at the Theater Royal Drury Lane on Catherine Street in London’s West End. From there the 1968 Academy award winning movie was not far away until she eventually came upon Charles Dickens’s printed original.

But what of old books with distressed leather jackets and musty odors, browned papyrus, woodcut illustrations and scribbled dedications meant for strangers?

Unsubstantiated by content, old books are like old letters and locks of hair. Mementos important only when attached to memories.

Interred at an old bookshop along Holland Park in the stately boroughs of Kensington and Chelsea, undisturbed at the far corner of an unexplored oak gallery, two volumes were practically condemned to the past.

Entitled “Hard Times for These Times” (a.k.a Hard Times), the books betrayed provenance and publishing dates. It was 1866, exactly two centuries after London’s Great Fire that razed thatched structures then made of petrified but flammable timber framing mud and mortar caked with manure.

19th century Victorian London was the London of Holmes and Watson on Baker Street. It was the London of Scrooge, Sikes, Marx, Moriarty and The Ripper. It was the London of Mr. Brownlo, Fagin, Twist and Dawson, the Artful Dodger.

The author himself lived on No. 48 Daughty Street when he was not yet 50. He eventually ended up under other roofs and by 1866, rather than art, or the liquid brews that served as literary muses, it was necessity that forced Dickens’s quill upon paper for a tenth albeit unexpectedly uncommon novel.

Hard Times is one off. Unlike most of Dickens’ works, the story is not set in London but in a fictional town. Dickens’ works are illustrated. This contains only two for the 1866 edition. More importantly, it was published at the twilight of Dickens’ life four years before his death and not yet a year after surviving a train crash. Severely traumatized, his prolific writing quickly diminished.

But Hard Times' most important distinction is that it was compelled by the same utilitarianism the author condemned in this book.

In his latter years, Dickens’ readership had waned and Hard Times was an attempt at a monetary resurrection, raging, as it did, against utilitarian ethics where the promotion of the general social welfare is the ultimate goal in a utopia that declares prosperity parallels morality and laissez-faire capitalism improves our lot.

Like books, even myths can be timeless.

There are few of these rarities in my attic. There’s one by a former U.S. president dedicated after a historic trip to China and long after falling from grace. There’s Out of Control by Zbigniew Brzezinski dedicated with doodles drawn during a conference. There’s yet another by a dead dictator, dedicated to a henchman, thereafter left to decorate a large desk unread.

Through its histories alone, we’re smitten. Savored, for sure the read will be much better. Old letters, locks of hair and old books can enchant after all.



Dean de la Paz sits as an independent member of the Board of Directors of one of the Philippine's oldest banks and is a senior consultant to a government financial institution. He is program director for financial education at a UK-based university where he is also a professor of finance, strategic management and business policy.

The recent increase in electricity rates saw our bills increase by as much as 80 percent with some households and small businesses paying the cost equivalent of a small second-hand generator.

Despite information campaigns and a policy of transparency in electricity pricing, the sudden increases have led to wild speculations on its rationale going from the plausible to the absurd.

Noting consumption remained constant, at least from the perspective of consumers, some saw it as a prelude to the elections.

Others said political families were gearing up for a return to oligarchy.

Others still, blamed the bill collector, a guttural predisposition albeit as pointless as blaming a waiter for dishes not cooked to our liking.

It is cliché that we set guard dogs on bill collectors.

Never mind that the aggravating factors were far removed from the collecting entities we come in contact with.

Part of the problem is technical jargon. The definitions of power generation, transmission and distribution remain unclear.

Part can also be blamed on misconceptions.

For too long, as common as Colgate is used to define toothpaste, Xerox for photocopiers, and Frigidaire for refrigerators, the Manila Electric Company or Meralco personified the whole electricity industry.

For the business niche for which we write, momentarily indulge us if you will.

From this paragraph forward we will attempt to demystify the rate increases using language understandable to consumers with a 1,000-word English vocabulary in the hopes they will have a better appreciation of their power bills.

To understand the recent rate increases, one needs to understand that piece of paper drawn up by Meralco that shows the different costs that make up the bill.

The bill is divided into three parts just as the industry has three separate sectors.

The first are from the companies that produce electricity. We call them generators.

The second sector is a company that takes the electricity from the generators and transmits these along power lines and cables. This is the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP).

The last sector is made up of companies that receive the electricity from the NGCP and distributes these to consumers.

Because distributors deal directly with consumers, like waiters, they collect payments for all three sectors.

Most payments reimburse payments to generators or NGCP. Distributors only charge for their end.

Laws regulate the prices NGCP and distributors can charge.

This means that they cannot price without our permission and only after approvals granted by the Energy Regulatory Commission.

Our laws do not regulate the prices generators charge.

When they buy the electricity from generators, transmit and then distribute electricity, respectively, NGCP and then the distributors pay whatever generators charge.

In effect, distributors like Meralco pay in advance and shoulder for us all prior charges.

The recent increases were mostly from increases in costs in the generation sector where power plants produce electricity by burning coal or oil-based products.

Some plants produce electricity from the flow of water from dams and rivers, or from turbines that turn from windmills or the force of steam from under the earth.

Because of the dry spell brought about by the El Niño phenomenon, river and dam water levels were low.

Electricity produced by plants that use those as fuel could not operate at maximum.

Because water is not imported and paid with dollars, had those plants operated at maximum then electricity prices would have been lower.

Instead, the power plants that burn imported petroleum fuels operated longer than usual.

More so, when two huge plants experienced coal supply shortages.

Typically, petroleum-burning plants are used mainly during hours when more people use electricity between 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. and from 6:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. Recently, they had to run the whole day.

These plants are more expensive.

They burn imported fuels bought with dollars.

Moreover, these fuel prices are dictated by foreign oil producers, suppliers and regional oil traders in Singapore where the prices of oil products we import (called the Mean of Platts) are determined.

Fortunately, power rates will fall when enough rain fills our dams and rivers, and the plants that produce electricity from these add to the more expensive coal and petroleum-burning plants that now supply us power.

In any case, consumption notwithstanding, the recent increase in power rates was due to the kind of fuels employed where, coincidentally, the world price of those increased in recent months.

Neither politics nor the NGCP and distributors like Meralco had anything to do with it.

First, they had the pedigreed take to the gutter to peddle the fallacy of double appropriations where there were none.

Where the electorate is easily awed by class and titled names followed by alphabet soup, many realized too late that there were two different roads — one, an elevated toll way, another, a critical ground-level freeway.

Next, they recruited academics to babble and boil on land valuations.

Never mind fixed protocols on zonal valuations and cosmic differences between commercial and residential property. The mudslinger’s salad tosses apples with oranges, nuts, and acidic vinaigrette.

Recently, they had a cocktail party habitué conduct a forensic audit on a candidate’s net worth absent source financial data, and worse, biased with venom and lacking basic grounding in accountancy.

Never mind ignorantly lumping historic costs with current costs. So what if speculation and gossip filled in net worth gaps.

The diatribe was customized for social climbing chit-chat.

Role-playing games were tailored for garden clubs comprised of the coiffured, geriatric gossipers, and hors d’ouevres — fed pyramid climbers with invitations to the 2010 Kamaganak Inc. reunion.

Events organizers and bartenders must be serving 90 percent proof moonshine.

Slurring, a deposed president implicated in insider trading accused a rival candidate of stock market irregularities.

We remember when Joseph Estrada last dipped his fingers in the financial markets.

Not only did he ignite a catfight with regulators in his own version of “Hello Commissioner”, but, also, eventual criminal charges were filed.

Does this ring a bell?

Victimized were two state-controlled funds quickly depleted of over Php 3 billion and nearly bankrupted when forced to invest in a company whose stock crashed and burned trapping in the conflagration the pensions of private and government rank and file.

Accusations of stock manipulation were also raised when Best World (BW) Resources stock initially valued at Php 0.80 per share was gamed, bloating to Php 145.00 within 12 months, and then, within days, fatally plummeting.

Had it not been foiled, the gambit was to import Macau gambling after certain “good fellas” had fallen in disfavor from the Chinese Triad.

As hollow as the peddled audit of net worth was, recent accusations regarding Vista Land (Vista Land & Lifescapes, Inc.) are just as flawed and worse, in its rash recklessness, the unfounded mudslinging virtually imperils the capital markets.

Last week, tackling the toxic fallout of such irresponsible heresies, Business Mirror section editor Emeterio Sd. Perez enumerated fallacies foisted on the Vista Land issue.

In the language of finance, primary and secondary offerings differ from an introductory offer and a follow-on offering. The first two refer to new shares issued by the company and existing shares held by shareholders. The latter refers to offering sequence.

Primary offering proceeds go to the corporation. For Vista Land Php 12.21 billion entered as new paid-in capital.

New market listing rules cover each of initial offerings, offerings by way of introduction and follow-on offerings. Vista Land falls under the latter two.

On the accusation of coercion demanding lock-up exemptions, no rule prohibits existing stockholders with below 10 percent holdings from selling in a follow-on offering, specially one structured after an introductory offer.

Critics say shareholders violated mandatory lock-ups and that Manuel Villar “earned Php 5 million from the IPO and is now using that amount to fund his campaign.” Vista Land was not an IPO. Moreover, lock-ups protect against dumping. There was no dumping.

There was nothing to coerce. Secondary shares were offered coincident with primary shares sold to international investors underwritten by foreign underwriters. These were differentiated and were outside the lock-up requisite.

Accessing definitive data from the Philippine Stock Exchange, as of June 30, 2007, Vista Land’s shareholders included corporations with combined holdings of 83.31 percent.

This included Adelfa Properties then holding 24.36 percent and Fine Properties with 47.63 percent.

On September 30, 2007, these holdings were reduced to 59.21 percent, not from dumping but from dilutions when the outstanding shares increased from 6.38 billion to 8.54 billion.

Adelfa and Fine Properties’s holdings, while retaining the exact volume it had in June 2007, were diluted to 18.22 percent and 35.63 percent respectively.

Records prove that between June and September 2007 there were no major changes in the holdings of the corporate shareholders.

In December 2008, over a year after the offering, Adelfa and Fine Properties, both connected to Villar, held the exact number of shares it had on June 2007.

Debunking accusations of squirreling-away for campaign spending, opting for continuing buybacks, by December 2009 Adelfa Properties increased its holdings from 18.22 percent to 24.24 percent.

Distorting moral demarcations, impetuously seizing the moment, Benigno Aquino III blindly backstopped Estrada’s expose, while a redoubtable senatorial candidate undermined market credibility.

Learning disabilities notwithstanding, accusers should study the market’s new rules lest they recklessly inflict irreparable damage to the capital markets and the economy. When dripping and drooling venom and bile, opportunists should really keep their mouths closed.

Coming from the presidencies of Corazon Aquino and Fidel Ramos, in his inaugural address Joseph Estrada declared neither relatives nor friends would receive favors under his watch.

Alluding to his predecessors, Kamaganak Incorporated was coined to represent corruption under Aquino. Under Ramos it was reclaimed land deals and the Centennial Park project.

Estrada was later deposed and the man responsible for his impeachment was then House Speaker Manuel Villar.

When another Aquino tastelessly danced a jig on the Senate floor anti-corruption sentiments ignited an uprising within hours. Benefiting from Villar’s initiative, Estrada’s vice-president grabbed the presidential reins on expectations she would clean up after.

Unfortunately, Gloria Arroyo outdid Kamaganak Inc.

Where accusations surround her own, hers was an expanded conglomerate of family members, in-laws, official and unofficial extensions, province-mates, bodyguards, pedicurists and gardeners all caught in her controversies.

It was moral ascendancy that ushered Aquino into Malacanang and its absence that prosecuted Estrada.

It was corruption that helped Arroyo clamber up the presidential pedestal but it is also corruption elevated to commanding heights that serves as an underlying issue as she steps down.

One candidate for the presidency has correctly made it a theme by cloaking himself with the mantle worn by his parents.

Another, going beyond rhetoric, has chosen to focus on programs to alleviate the poverty cultural cacique-mentalities and long-standing societal injustice cause.

One simply mounts a white steed. That may be enough given intellectual and experiential minimums.

Lacking these, some substitute moral ascendancy praying that an impassioned electorate dismisses the shadows of puppeteers behind. Another offers both embodiment and inspiration that poverty can indeed be overcome. Both should inspire. Both cannot be hollow.

Many fear corruption is endemic. Some resign it to the dark side of our national character.

As we face more potent corruption given the perpetuation of the Arroyo model migrating to other arenas, plus the prospective return of Kamaganak Inc. hidden in saddlebags strapped to a proverbial white steed, because that is the brand’s distinctive competence, let us see if truly this Trojan horse at our doorstep hides nothing.

Kamaganak Inc.’s complicity is addressed by R.A. 3019, The Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act.

Section 4 (a) states, “It shall be unlawful for any person having family or close personal relation with any public official to capitalize or exploit or take advantage of such family or close personal relation to directly or indirectly requesting or receiving any present, gift or material or pecuniary advantage from any other person having some business, transaction, application, request or contract with the government.”

Documents at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) show that a private business incorporated by the Benigno Aquino III on November 1986 barely 10 months after EDSA I was established “To conduct training programs for personnel and supervisors of government-owned or controlled corporations (GOCCs).” The given business address is the official residence of the President of the Republic.

Conflicted principals say they divested prior to Aquino’s presidency. But note the incorporation dates and the business address.

Here the SEC may be complicit in licensing an incorporation which purpose is inherently illegal and whose incorporator is conflicted. A “family” relation exists as defined by R.A. 3019, as does a capitalization for pecuniary gain via a government deal.

Section 5 further states that: “It shall be unlawful for the spouse or for any relative, by consanguinity or affinity, within the third degree, of the President of the Philippines, the Vice President of the Philippines, the President of the Senate, or the Speaker of the House of Representatives, to intervene, directly or indirectly, in any business, transaction, contract or application with government”.

In 1986, a boutique insurance company changed hands then forayed into the portfolios of moderately capitalized insurers then doing business with companies where government had investments or minimal equity.

While insurers might be allowed reinsurance contracts with the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS), never mind prohibited ownership under R.A. 3019, conflicts of interest are raised when these directly contract, feed and forage from the portfolios of entities with government equity or investments.

Appeals were made. None were heard.

As in the Arlegui-domiciled private corporation, the abuse of influence, whether brazen or implicit as in the disingenuous use of the official address, contradicts any anti-corruption crusade that waylays competence, experience and even work ethic in place of epidermal morality.

Because Kamaganak Inc. includes those angling for positions and contracts, a vote for a weak president is a vote for a strung-along Kamaganak Inc.

Recently, like ambulant squidball vendors, hucksters and public relations operators peddled material packaged to paint a front-running presidential candidate a crook.

Like Operation Market Garden, the failed 1944 plan to cross the Rhine, the offensive looked good on photographs, charts, and maps but its sorties suffered when analyzed in detail.

Because of its fallibilities, publicity stunt artists gambled wow-factors might suffice.

Given the electorate’s propensity for sound byte analysis, that was understandable.

When asked whether a candidate was mentally fit, the simple-minded diagnose from mannerisms.

When asked if a candidate grabbed land, sappy tales of the landless surface.

Never mind that bullet-riddled cadavers of massacred farmers at Malacanang’s perimeter and the seven slaughtered at Hacienda Luisita are more poignant and eloquent.

In each, profound analyses are absent.

Basically questioning net worth, the offensive augments the mudslinging campaign to paint one candidate not simply predisposed to allowing Gloria Arroyo to escape criminal accountability but also to embody specters of colossal expenses.

Substance did not matter as did kilometric footnotes ibidem ad nauseam, though most, other than unbundled estimates, drew from secondhand sources, sound bytes, newsreels and headlines —unacceptable in generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) and international financial reporting standards (IFRS).

Like the destitute of Tondo, even the pseudo-literati salivate. If not for money, those slobbering for recognition salivate for stature.

The mosaic was indeed colorful. That the palette did not match the contents did not matter. What mattered was the product peddled appeared as a clinical audit.

Never mind that these carried the same incredulity as the forged psychiatric evaluations of Benigno Aquino III that paid hacks inhale and then ventilate despite billowing from gastric infarctions.

Of note is a sloppy attempt at a forensic audit of the Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth (SALN) of one candidate where we are made to trust in its “auditor” despite the absence of appropriate credentials in accountancy.

What passes for analysis are hearsay and third-hand consultations from anonymous and gutless eunuchs who abdicate to innuendo and surrender legitimacy to partisanship.

Cutting to the chase, the fake audit concludes its targeted candidate could not have afforded an electoral bid. Never mind its ignorance of what comprises net worth.

It also disregards that under SALN requisites net worth is a limited and static picture of financial capacity. True financial capacity includes net future valuations that change daily.

In the package the so-called auditor also asks, regardless of the increase in net worth, should not income taxes be paid on those increases.

It then dwells on tax non-payment, makes a quantum leap to perjury and from there another leap to money-laundering.

The ignorance is brazenly disingenuous.

Increases in net worth do not necessarily emanate from current income. Most come from valuation increments, realized and passive income. A real forensic auditor analyzes from cash flow statements to determine source and composition before entertaining questions of income taxes, and accusations of perjury and money-laundering.

The audit likewise equated acquisition costs with book values for all assets whether real property or personal assets.

While real property are reported at acquisition cost, personal property are reflected at current values, the latter greater than the former.

Moreover, the audit is duplicitous where cash flow sources are suggested rather than validated. More when the audit fills in its own gaps, and employing grout it itself mixed, suddenly leaps to accusations of wrong-doing.

In accountancy, balance sheets are backstopped by cash flow and income statements.

Absent these, legitimate auditors do not speculate and from speculation condemn. Innuendos in place of cash flows do not suffice.

The amateur audit likewise suggests receivables account for the increase in net worth to justify campaign spending. That conjecture is flawed.

One, it assumes receivables came from debt yet under GAAP receivables can come from leases, rentals or dividends.

Two, net worth does not imply liquidity and does not come from cash increases alone.

Three, the numbers don’t reconcile.

The false conclusion leads to another that suggests the candidate earns income from debts.

Yet increases in net worth do not necessarily relate to current year taxable income, whether from lending, rentals or dividends.

Mudslingers, regardless of collar and pedigree should try a different tack in this season of payola.

Intellectual incompetence, no matter how glazed, peppered, or curried is worthless.

This fake audit makes sense only as hollow-point ordnance.

Like the notorious peddled squidball sold along gutters, its recipe is as dubious as its ingredients and its substance is only in its spice.

Among collectors of ancient blue and white ceramics there is a piece dealers avoid.

Traditionally a rice bowl, it has the characteristics of the late Ching Dynasty.

Although the bowl continues to be manufactured today in basically the same shape and design when emperors ruled China, its provenance is unmistakable.

The designs are crudely drawn; tints vary from cobalt to grayish blue; lines blur, stain and wash with the ceramic bone white.

Craftsmanship is absent. Art, more so. All it had was remnant utility.

Early in the last century, urban legend had it that the bowl was used only by social pariahs on the other side of the Parian.

To mock the people who ate out of it, the bowl was nicknamed “bastos”.

Though cliché, derision remains au courant.
Repugnance defined strata.

Fashionable irreverence was reserved for the educated. It was candor for them.

For the poor, it was coarse. It was “bastos”.

Bastos meant a cad as it did impertinence.

It meant inelegant and awkward, indecent and indecorous. Bastos also meant a caitiff.

Here we see its essential application against a social class. The Caitiff of lore were clanless.

They had no patrons and no pedigree. Their blood was “too thin”.

The moniker stuck as a social stain.

The intelligentsia, from economists to literati, compartmentalize to mimic superiority.

Social tagging, name-calling, derision and disdain included, are no different.

Like “bastos”, Tondo evokes misconceptions of abject inelegance.

Until one wrenches oneself from its clutches, survives, gets an education, and boldly steps into the world of the high-brow name-callers, stains scar, calcify, and remain cliché.

For the Byzantine determined to paint as a lie the roots of Manuel Villar, touring to Tondo and there discovering the cliché now gated, development can indeed raise eyebrows.

Where is the bathing pool of garbage, the smell of rotting fish, the stench of putrid canals and the poverty of Villar’s youth?

In an effort to disparage, critics wrote: “Apparently, from pictures and on-site investigation, Bernardo Street in North Balut is part of San Rafael Village, a gated community, equivalent at that time to Fil-Am Homes in Quezon City. A copy of the Transfer Certificate of Title for the property-which is a 560-square-meter lot-has also been provided. Now anyone who can afford to buy a 560-square-meter lot is not exactly consistent with being dirt poor.”

Against those, culled from the vivid memories of those who lived there at the time of Villar’s youth, Tondo was as far from what it is today as intrigue is as far from the truth.

One writer wrote of the old Tondo and the “fenced community”: “I (lived) from across a dirty river from San Rafael in Balut, Tondo. I grew up in Juan Luna and I studied nearby.”

“San Rafael’s entry is along North Bay Blvd where I used to ride my bicycle during my teen years. It is not fenced. They have an entrance but that’s just an entrance without any guards. I was born in Ilaw Street in Balut parallel to (the) San Rafael entrance and we have parallel streets that are open and connected with (the streets of the Villars). It was freely accessed. I know because I (played) there everyday.”

“At the end of San Rafael is a creek, Across is Isla San Juan which is almost like Isla Puting Bato where gangs and gang lords reign. Riots often broke out which accounted for 60 percent of the patients in Tondo General (Hospital).”

Another wrote: “Balut, Tondo had a landfill that dated back to the 1950s. People used to call it "tambakan" so eventually the name was officially adopted as Tambakan. It was a dumpsite long before Payatas became well-known.”

“Balut is an island. It was near a body of water which was black in color because of the dirt. When it rained, it overflowed to the streets.”

“The community was beside Smokey Mountain. The roads had neither cement nor asphalt. The place had no guards and there were very few homes because the area would flood when the high tide came in from Navotas.”

It is intellectual dishonesty to deliberately distort by transposing data from the present and imposing those unto the Tondo of Villar’s youth.

Economists colloquially refer to the aberration as a comparison between apples and oranges.
For the rest of us, unwilling to evoke privilege and pedigree and apply both against those struggling on the other side of the Parian, that dishonesty is what we call “bastos”.

Among the fourteen party-list associations accused of being fronts organized to populate the House of Representatives with sycophants of Gloria Arroyo one represents “balut’ vendors and ambulant peddlers.

A second represents security guards and night watchmen, while a third, pedicab and tricycle drivers.

Accredited by the Commission on Elections (COMELEC), these have as representatives a sister-in-law of Arroyo, her son, the majority party’s kingmaker and a former congressman where Arroyo is now a congressional candidate, and finally, the general who held four different portfolios in her cabinet.

While debate rages on the meaning of “marginalized” as defined by the 1987 Constitution and R.A. 7941 “The Party List System Law,” subsequent jurisprudence and resolutions have clearly defined the terms “belong” and “represent” in determining the qualifications for party-list nominees.

Two rules comprise definitive elucidation.

The decision in the 2001 case Ang Bagong Bayani-OFW Labor Party v. Commission on Elections, et al, states that “The participation of the government or its officials in the affairs of a party-list candidate is not only illegal and unfair to other parties, but also deleterious to the objective of the law.”

Another, COMELEC Resolution no. 8806 declares a sectoral nominee is “one who BELONGS (caps supplied) to the marginalized and underrepresented sector/s, the sectoral party, organization, political party or coalition he seeks to represent.”

Three qualifiers rule.

No government participation for party-lists and nominees must both represent and belong to the sector.

On two of the three, the case is clear.

Two indicated they did not seek the representation but were merely invited.

Their non-association is not debatable.

Unfortunately, after allowing the printing of party-lists in ballots and only after initiating a culling process, the COMELEC is at best ambivalent.

For an agency whose mandate is to count, not knowing one comes before two verges on criminal ineptitude.

Incompetence and dereliction when deliberate or premeditated fall under the swathe of repulsive political sabotage.

There is no excuse for serial and preponderant bungling.

Here we ask the reader to consider a series of extenuating circumstances in appreciating an emergent ominous condition both serious and alarming.

Already Arroyo is relocating her pedestal from Malacanang to Batasan hills.

Relegate her presidential candidate’s campaign to a sideshow zarzuela together with issues of party-bolting, non-funding and its comic-relief where a gameshow host is recruited as a vice-presidential contender and suddenly the ducks are in a straight line.

Add what follows blindsiding on the party-list issues and what emerges is a sinister scenario that may well be Plan A.

The latest fiasco floats to the top like garbage on floodwaters.

Last week the, COMELEC admitted that its automation contractor supplied the wrong ultraviolet ink used in printing the ballots thus rendering special security marks unreadable by the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines.

The same contractor supplied the PCOS machines and the ink.

Accountabilities are clear.

Both ultraviolet features and ink are part of the high costs we paid for.

What isn’t is the COMELEC’s response.

Incompetence is priceless. Their instructions were to shut off the machine’s ultraviolet detection safeguards.

Let’s review previous episodes of bungling and see if they comprise serial stupidity.

One episode involves the disqualification-accreditation-disqualification case of Vetallano Acosta, a Kilusang Bagong Lipunan (KBL) presidential candidate KBL officials do not know and consequently deny.

Acosta was disqualified after his name was printed on ballots.

The inclusion was graphically strategic.

His inclusion buries Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino’s name deeper in the list.

Another episode involves the denial of a statutory review of the source code.

Such would have revealed possible algorithms and protocols that automatically perform the traditional “dagdag-bawas” fudging previously patented by presidential phone-pals.

A third involves the denial of random manual audits that check the automated count especially critical as the source code reviews had been denied.

Such audits would provide not simply validations but more importantly, the kind of warm and fuzzy comfort needed by a public already doubly suspicious.

It does not help that Moe, Larry and Curly are in charge.

Some of the episodes of bungling constantly play and replay in the minds of an increasingly anxious and rightfully vexed electorate for whom the worst nightmares of olive-drab designer-anarchy recur.

From awarding to controversial contractors and outsourced manufacturers to its stand on pre-campaign campaigning, its inability to discipline erring candidates, to its iron-handed treatment of voters, the counting body has all but lost the public’s trust and respect.

Unfortunately, reviewing the COMELEC’s serial bungling these last months it is our democracy that stands to lose more.

It is not the first time it happened and it may not be the last.

In 2008 as the global financial crisis was unraveling and Lehman Brothers was folding up, the same kind of importations of Turkish wheat flour were taking place.

In late August of 2008, at the ports of Manila, five container vans filled with Turkish wheat flour were allowed entry despite protests from local flour millers who said the shipments were either mis-declared or smuggled.

The case of the 2008 Turkish importations was not an isolated one.

Before that ten, twenty-foot containers were off-loaded in Ozamiz City. While its markings were in Chinese, these were indistinguishable. Their contents were declared as starch.

In another part of the country, this time in Cagayan Valley, a trader was arrested for storing nearly one thousand bags of flour deemed unfit for human consumption.

People are starting to see a pattern.

When funds are desperately needed, sudden importations, some smuggled, others mis-declared, take place.

Still reeling from the convoluted explanations that surrounded the recent rice and sugar importations, already a third has been added to the increasingly dubious shopping list.

As it was in 2008, the recent importations involve Turkish flour.

This time however, there is something that may be grossly criminal violating not just the tariff code but verging on criminality that inflicts not merely injustices nor economic inequities, but more importantly, fatalities.

What criminality there in these importations exists on three levels of severity.

The least severe is the issue of either undervaluation or mis-declaration.

According to the Philippine Association of Flour Millers, of the 86,000 metric tons (MT) of flour imported from Turkey last year and from January to February this year, 19,000 MT were undervalued. This resulted in Php 16.90 million in tax and duties losses.

Following questions of valuation are questions of quality.

Because large bakeries avoid Turkish flour due to quality concerns it is the smaller mom-and-pop bakeries and pan de sal manufacturers for whom dubious importations offer cheaper alternatives where those most vulnerable are exposed to the deadliest hazards.

Two seminal studies on Turkish wheat flour raise the gravest questions.

One, entitled “Aflatoxin Levels in Wheat Samples Consumed in Some Regions of Turkey”, is an August 2005 study undertaken by faculty members of the Haceteppe University, Department of Toxicology in Ankara, Turkey.

According to the study “fifty-nine percent of the samples were found to be positive for aflatoxins.”

To appreciate the severity of these issues some definitions are in order.

Mycotoxins, from the Greek mukos meaning fungus and the Latin toxicum meaning poison, are toxic products that enter the food chain after being produced by fungi that colonize crops.

They resist decomposition and are not broken down by digestion. Cooking and freezing cannot destroy them.

Aflatoxins and Ochratoxins are two of the six major groups of Mycotoxins. Both are potent and deadly carcinogens.

Once ingested, both can be found in milk in mammary glands, whether human or animal, while the latter can also be found in blood.

Animals fed with contaminated products pass these on in their meat. It bears repeating that both resist decomposition and digestion.

Both cannot be destroyed by cooking or freezing.

The other study, “Total Aflatoxin, Aflatoxin B1 and Ochratoxin A Levels in Turkish Wheat Flour,” is more relevant.

It includes a discussion of exports to Asia and determines the toxin levels in those.

The study assesses the total toxin levels comprised of aflatoxins and ochratoxins in 100 samples of wheat grown in seven regions of Thrace, Turkey.

Thrace is one of three major wheat producing regions of Turkey’s 9.5 million hectares planted to wheat.

Results show from 10 percent to 15 percent of wheat flour from Turkey come from Thrace.

The six-page study was undertaken by Ali Aydin, Ugur Gunse and Salih Demirel from the Department of Food Hygiene and Technology of the Istanbul University and the Department of Food Technology of the Balikesir University in Turkey.

Its findings are alarming.

Ochratoxins were found in 81 percent of the analyzed samples.

On samples that reached Asia, 21.7 percent were contaminated with aflatoxins.

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel wants the government to conduct its own tests.

But apparently, our officials have a different agenda.

Where no domestic shortages exist, the public understands how importations result in windfalls for those with a desperate need for funds.

What goes beyond reason however is when trades are pursued despite the dangers that threaten those most vulnerable to cheap albeit fatally toxic products.

The plan was to skip the safeguards, skirt congressional debate and virtually write a Php 10 billion check for 160 megawatt (mW) generators for Mindanao.

One reader says let’s cut through the crap.

Let’s do that. Let us analyze this deal from the perspective of accounting, tariffs, and cost-benefits.

Freed from checks, of the amount open to risk and spending-as-they-please (anything from matches and kindling to rain dancers and glow worms), half comes from calamity funds, another, from contingencies.

By applying the US$ 1.0 million per mW benchmark for the development of diesel-fired plants, Php 20 billion calamity and contingency funds can buy 444.50 megawatts at Php 45.00 to the dollar.

The ratio assumes capitalized expenditures (capex) depreciated over continuous annual cash flows.

Of that 25 percent are pre-operating development plus financing charges, while from 55 percent (for Japanese-branded engines) to 75 percent (for European-branded equipment) are capex.

If diesels generators were purchased by the National Power Corporation (NAPOCOR), cost capitalization applies and capex depreciates thus allowing fewer encumbrances on downstream tariffs.

Unfortunately, NAPOCOR does not have that kind of money for a crisis it predicted would hit in 2008 when Mindanao’s 1,697 mW demand surpassed 1,681 mW capacities.

Ad hoc cabinet gatekeepers should crunch the math before opening their mouths.

Should local government units (LGU) lease or buy 160 mW generators, both ways, acquisition is charged in the present.

Under government accounting protocols, equipment acquisition must be expensed in real-time. Calamity and contingent funds are not allowed depreciation when expended by LGUs. Their acquisition costs cannot be capitalized over time.

Together with real-time lease charges, operation and maintenance (O&M) and fuel costs inflict inordinately heavy burdens on tariffs when we consider that the crisis is quickly washed off by the coming rains.

When the Energy Department pushed for emergency powers they estimated the cost of the Mindanao fix between Php 8 billion to Php 10 billion. Where did they get those numbers?

At Php 10 billion for leases, the effective expense of US$ 1.40 million/mW against capital expenditures ranging from US$ 550 thousand to US$ 750 thousand per megawatt is excessive. There would be no financing or pre-operating costs.

For every dollar only from 39 percent to 54 percent goes to generating capacity. This raises red flags.

The fudge represents funds risked to “other costs,” corruption, and windfalls for middlemen.

Until the rains come in July, that’s a monthly operating expense of Php 2.5 billion against the estimates of business losses of Php 1.0 billion from revenues foregone and incremental expenses from self-generating units.

If Php 2.5 billion includes fuel and O&M charges, the unsubsidized fuel-cost soars north from Php 19.60 to over Php 24.11 per kilowatt-hour. Higher, if fuel costs were not included.

Why? The emergency funds must cover leasing, O&M and fuel costs. Our basis is NPC’s Small Power Utilities Group (SPUG) full costs and subsidies.

Modulars run on diesel, barges, on bunker. Bunker is cheaper.

Officials want diesel-fired 160 megawatt modulars forgetting the four dormant bunker-fired 242mw barges moored off Navotas.

Fuel costs for SPUG’s bunker-fired plants range from Php 12.00/kwh to Php 18.00/kWh.

When generators cost US$ 1.4 million/mW, minimum diesel costs start from Php 19.60/kWh to Php 24.11/kWh. Costs per kilowatt-hour increase given load factors of 90 percent and below. Sensitivity runs indicate as much as Php 25.29/kWh. Now add leasing and O&M.

Back to the bigger picture, the net effects are additional losses of at least Php 5 million where the Php 1.0 billion monthly business losses vanish but are replaced by total monthly costs of Php 2.5 billion (Php 10 billion divided by four months) and astronomical increases in tariffs.

After spending Php 10 billion, over Php 750 million in residual monthly losses will continue as the 160mW patchwork hardly covers Mindanao’s 650mW deficiency.

On logistics, because modulars come in increments of 1.0 mW and 2.0 mW units, 160 mW entails at least eighty separate power purchase agreements (PPA) where each PPA creates a Gordian knot of stranded asset and contract costs. Because of the abbreviated crisis period, take-or-pay provisions are likely.

In summary, government accounting compels real-time expenses.

The benchmark equipment costs, whether leased or purchased, allow margins that license corruption. The per kilowatt-hour charges for this 160 mW scare, skirt and suck strategy show suddenly-bloated tariffs.

By expensing Php 2.5 billion to mitigate Php 1.0 billion in monthly losses in the Garci and Ampatuan sandbox, this ludicrous gambit adds to the Mindanao curse as it falls short of the temporary deficiency but recklessly allows unchecked, corruption-prone leeway.

It is at once crass and colloquial. Roman also, but not quite.

Spondulix is street slang for money, specifically old coins — pecuniary knick-knacks that burn holes in pockets or bric-a-brac change paid by gumshoes to bribe snitches.

It is from the Greek spondulos, shells used as currency. It is the gold in the infernal “guns, goons, and gold” inherent in local politics. It is bribe money.

The phrase appropriately describes what Roman-originated politics has become. More now than in previously less sardonic administrations combined.

When the Ang Kapatiran Party (AKP) broke into the political scene in 2007, one of its advocacies was debunking money as necessary for political office.

With Php 2.0 million, AKP fielded three senatorial candidates against parties with machinery and mullah.

As expected, none won save for a district counselor.

If money was a factor, it was not apparent.

What was apparent was his name. He was the nephew of an influential politician in the town where he ran.

It is difficult to erase from any analyses relational factors, specifically how those would not have been a variable in his winning.

Unfortunately, David did not slay Goliath.

Notwithstanding his victory in insignificant street-corner polls, the win failed to discredit money’s exigencies.

In 2010’s senatorial run, desperate needs might have awakened some to the utility of money.

Of its 2007 senatorial candidates, two jumped the AKP ark along with AKP’s former executive director.

Perhaps realizing few can walk on water, they’ve crossed the portside plank. It’s not all about money, but the money can’t hurt either.

Admittedly, there are other more principled reasons for the pragmatism. The cause Benigno Aquino III carries is indeed one that attracts the best of men.

But the cost of campaigning cannot be denied.

Poll rankings and the Commission on Election’s criteria on campaigning wherewithal reemphasize money’s utility as ugly as that may be.

For another front-runner, presidential candidate Manuel Villar, estimates of pre-campaigning expenditures reached Php 1.2 billion.

Few can deny the media exposures do not fuel his momentum.

At a minimum of 10 million votes to qualify as a contender, that’s Php 120 a vote.

AKP’s Php 2.0 million in 2007 divided three ways is Php 666 thousand per senatorial candidate. The number of the beast is ominous. More with a peso sign as a prefix.

Where the most successful AKP candidate ranked in the mid-thirties garnering fewer than 80,000 votes, that’s a sunk and unredeemable cost of Php 8.33 per voter.

AKP’s sunk costs versus another’s investments indicate the indispensability of funding.

Because AKP’s senatorial candidates lost, it is impossible to now raise similar amounts when rankings are saturated by memories of written-off losses.

Even among good causes, some are better than others and Aquino’s candidacy presents a similarly-principled but more viable option.

Last polled by the Social Weather Stations in February, of AKP’s three now with the Liberal Party (LP), its former executive director ranks 18th, another, 35th, and the last, 44th.

Only one, still with the AKP, ranks 43rd. The rest are off the charts.

At that level, he is statistically tied with a former AKP candidate now running with Aquino.

Opposite the morality spectrum political vulgarity transforms the money requisite comical and reminiscent of ridicule and embarrassment inflicted on game show contestants.

One candidate drafted as a last choice after a cabinet secretary and an actor-senator declined recently found himself denied timely financial support.

There are precedents.

The installation of a celebrity, crowd-drawing, albeit controversially-qualified vice president buys safeguards against sudden unseating following the patented threat of greater-evils that protected Gloria Arroyo.

But is a spare tire needed in Arroyo’s post-Malacanang agenda?

In the tasteless airing of stinginess and parsimonious betrayals in public, the lack of a well-thought out roster and impromptu candidacies expose a hollow political agenda.

These money-bickerings ignite latent doubts that a serious presidency and vice-presidency sought by the state-endorsed party are among its primary agenda. More so, considering substantial expenditures re-channeled and focused to ensure a portentous mandate at the Lower House where creeping cabal support seems to be Plan A.

Apparently some candidacies are nothing but matters of money doled from the start and profit gained at the end.

In pidgin Pilipino-Latin, pera-pera ab initio et quaestus ultimus.