Mindanaons should not vote P-Noys' Senatorial Ticket

By MORTZ C. ORTIGOZA

With three of its senatorial bets struggle to maintain three lead in the Magic 12 of the senate race, political party United Nationalist Alliance’s spin masters are not worth their salt.
 They should be exploiting at the helm how the Aquino administration wreck the power supply in Mindanao when the people there suffer up to eight hours daily brownout, susmariosep, that cost P100 million a month alone in the SocSarGen Area (South Cotabato, Sarangani, General Santos City).
 A town mate, businessman Rey Billena, told recently Business Mirror newspaper that he loses P500 thousand a month in his ice cream business as a result of the outage.
 Economists said that since two years ago President Benigno Aquino III has already knew the looming power problem but did not lift a finger to solve it.
 Senior economist Gerardo Sicat blames the factors behind the crisis.
 He cited that Mindanao electricity-distribution grid was not connected to the Luzon and Visayas grid; the base load of power generation for the region was not increased sufficiently; the decision to undertake approvals was snail-paced; and the privatization of government power plants through the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (Epira) was not undertaken.
 Professor Cielito Habito of Ateneo de Manila said foreign investors are still largely concerned with “inferior infrastructure, high power costs, ownership restrictions and other issues that await definitive resolution .
Mindanao has a deficit of 294- megawatt (MW) with demand at 1,157 MW against an actual supply of only 863 MW.
 The people there suffer but the propaganda folks of UNA seem to lack the resolve to exploit it so it gets Mindanoans favor at the expense of President Aquino’s senatorial tickets in the Liberal Party.
(Send Comment to totomortz@yahoo.com)