Czar

"It’s the economy, stupid!”

This was the famous slogan of the Bill Clinton presidential campaign in 1992. The Arkansas governor ascended the presidency on the promise he would restore order in the economy.

It will do well for the Duterte administration to take this as guide. The latest SWS poll reports a significant drop in the President’s job approval ratings. That drop in public confidence is widely attributed to the escalating inflation rate bedeviling the domestic economy over the past nine months.

While the President was delivering discourses on his idea of God and narrating stories about his Maranao grandmother, inflationary pressures were building up. The escalation in the inflation rate reached its full fury last month, after inclement weather wreaked havoc on our food supplies and crude oil prices breached $80 per barrel.

Much earlier in the year, by Duterte’s own account, Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo advised him to act on the building inflation rate. The President did not seem to take that advise as urgent – until it was too late. Duterte, we all know, has little affinity for economic discourse.

When Arroyo rose to become House Speaker, she mobilized her talented team of experts to find ways to grapple with the mounting inflation. But the legislative branch can only propose laws, not manage an inflationary situation on a day-to-day basis.

To be sure, technocrats in the executive branch have produced a package of short-term measures to combat inflation. The Monetary Board, likewise, dug into its toolbox to help cool the market. But the government response remains vague to the general population watching helplessly as their purchasing power shrinks.

What the obscure package of policy responses to elevated inflation lacks, it seems, is a face. We need someone who can speak authoritatively on how exactly inflation is being pushed back. We need an Anti-Inflation Czar who will personify government’s determined response against the price scourge.

President Duterte might consider naming one, considering his hesitation to discuss matters economic. He should be someone from the inner circle able to break down the complexity and assure the public the scourge is being pushed back even as global prices for oil is beyond our control.

Eminent Domain

This one is for constitutionalists to argue about: Is it possible to award a private company the right to eminent domain?

Lawyer Manases Carpio, who has taken up the case of Panay Electric Company (PECO), raised that question after the House committee on franchises denied renewal of the 95-year-old power distribution company. The franchise for power distribution in Iloilo City and environs was instead awarded to a mining company with only P2.5 million in capitalization (later adjusted to P10 million).

House Bill 8132, intending to renew PECO’s franchise, was filed over a year ago. The committee did not act on it.

Instead, the congressmen adopted House Bill 8302 filed only last July. This second bill awarded the Iloilo power distribution franchise More Minerals Corp. (MMC) even as the company has no record in power distribution.

The reasons the committee offered for its decision to deny extension of PECO’s franchise was that it had issued erroneous billings and that its employees were discourteous to customers. The Philippine Electric Plant Owners Association, the umbrella organization of power distribution companies, found the committee’s reasoning petulant and arbitrary. That opinion, however, might fail to stop House Bill 8302.

Carpio describes House Bill 8302 as “patently void, illegal and unconstitutional.” He is led to this conclusion by a provision in this bill that authorized MMC “to exercise the power of eminent domain, insofar as it may be reasonably necessary for the efficient establishment, improvement, rehabilitation, maintenance and operation of its services.” Therefore, the House bill continues, “the grantee may acquire such private property as is actually necessary for the realization of the purposes for which this franchise is granted.”

The right of eminent domain is normally given to the State to enable it to acquire property in order to further the public interest. The House bill tests constitutional bounds by awarding the same right to a private concern.

It is understandable that the honorable legislators might need to insert a provision as controversial as this. PECO’s franchise end this January. It owns the transmission lines, posts and all other assets it has accumulated over the past 95 years as power distributor to this locality.

If PECO refuses to sell its assets, there is no way MMC can set up its distribution business in two months to take over the franchise area. The House bill basically empowers MMC to forcibly acquire the distribution assets owned by PECO. When martial law was declared in 1972 and Marcos wanted to take over Meralco’s operations, confiscation was at least disguised as a sale.

To be sure, the sly manner the congressmen denied PECO the franchise extension it applied for and award the franchise to another company with such amazing speed and indecent haste is the consequence of a powerful business and political alliance. But the aggressive designs of this alliance could yet be tripped by a sound constitutional question.

If the House can no longer be the arena for reasonably arguing PECO’s case, the company hopes the Senate could be a fairer forum. If all else fails, then the constitutional issues raised here will have to go to the courts.

In the meantime, while the squabbling over the franchise continues, will Iloilo lose it power?