Are Senators Bankrolled by Big Business?

Amendment of the PSA remains unacted by the Senate

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

Amendment to 100 % foreign or Filipino the ownership of a business utility in the Philippines can solve the Filipinos unemployment problem as it will open the economy to more investors.

So who says that Federalism is the economic silver bullet?

It’s the amendment of the Public Service Acts (PSA), dimwit, that until now the Senators procrastinate to pass so President Rodrigo Duterte can sign it into law.

The present PSA or otherwise known as  Commonwealth Act No. 146 covers all types of common carriers, be it by land, air or water, water supplies and systems, petroleum, electricity, communications systems and even broadcasting stations.

Tycoons in the Philippines where 14 of them joined the richest  people in the world according to Forbes Magazine's Richest People in the Planet for 2017. Photo Credit: Cebu Properties.

It is where utilities have been mandated by law to be averagely 60 percent owned by Filipino or Filipinos despite the thick pockets of the foreign partners who sulked themselves to settle for the 40 % of the voting stocks.

Because of this seemingly xenophobic equity, foreign investors go instead to Mainland China, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, and other South East Asian countries.

If the House of Representatives passed the PSA in September last year, why the Mabagal na  Mataas na Kapulungan or Slow Senate as derisively called by Speaker Panty Alvarez until now sits on it?

Is it because its campaign time for the May 13, 2019 poll for re-elective senators like Grace Poe, Cynthia Villar, Nancy Binay, Sonny Angara, Koko Pimentel, Bam Aquino, and JV Ejercito where they have to crisscross the country in an expensive hundreds of millions of pesos stump where they need radio and television advertisement?

Do they need badly the monies and aircraft of these corporations being affected by the amendment of the PSA?

Here’s what I wrote before on the lobbies that made our senators corrupt at the impoverishment of the Filipinos.

The indifference of Congress to amend this old law (PSA) was suspected to be influenced by the lobby monies of big businesses primordially owned by the local oligarchs whose clout run deep in the recently mentioned industries that made them even the globally richest individuals as published by Forbes Magazine on its 500 Richest People in the World.

Their control of these industries cost a gaping trade imbalance of US $4.72 billion in the Philippines last year.

Based on December 2017 data, the country has US$ 4.72 billion export versus the US$ 8.74 billion import according to the Philippine Statistics Authority.

This growing trade imbalance helped weakened the exchange rate and spikes the prices of goods and services at the expense of poor Filipinos.

READ MY OTHER ARTICLE: 

Telco’s Free Aircraft Services to Senators at Our Expense

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When I opined at Face Book the order of President Rodrigo Rodrigo Duterte to the Department of Labor & Employment to convene the Wage Boards in the various regions in the country to increase the minimum wages, I cited that the spikes will only make the employers’ recoup their expenses for the wages from the masses – their end users.
My wife then posed to me:
“Paano iyong mga pokpok (prostitutes, harlot, and whore), Marcelo (psst my real name son of a gun!), magtataas din sila ng presyo?”

Surprised, I gave her my following answers:
1) The vaunted Pokpok Pricing System will not go with the weakening of the peso versus the U.S Dollar, or the spike of petroleum from $80 per barrel to the $100 per barrel Saudi Arabia and Russia want to happen;
2) According to friends at the squatter area when I quaffed beer with them, an 18 to 30 years old prostitute in Dagupan City could peg at P500 but if a customer knows the trade, he could avoid the pimp (bugaw) and transact directly with the pokpok for P250 to P300 in three hours short time at a motel where he would either be paying P250 for an airconditioned room, P180 for a room ventilated by an electric fan, or P80 for no ventilation at all.

"Doon na lang ako sa walang electric fan sir, P80 lang mura, malayo sa P250 na aircon," my errand boy Galman joined in a supposedly family's conversation.

My eldest son was amazed by my economics street analogy that I have to further narrate with him and his mom why the price of pokpok keeps declining despite the economic crunch the Filipinos suffered under the Duterte Administration.

“When a new chief of police (COP), a lieutenant colonel, assumed his post in another city, in just one day there were seven suspected illegal drug pushers sprawled on the streets after they were shot to death,” I cited.
I stressed that two of the cadavers (bankay) were thrown in the main entrance of the squatter area where notorious narco pushers traded there publicly. 
“Some of their wives were coddling Shih Tzu, a tiny Chrysanthemum dog, despite them and their husbands’ absence of legitimate gainful employment. But they have monies to maintain pets because their drug trade thrive,” a detective told me.

The chief cited to me that after those killings of the pushers, narcotics disappeared in that squatter area.
“The pushers feared death. However, another problem cropped up. Their wives became pokpok and the Shih Tzu disappeared – probably they sold them if not cooked them”.
“Ampa-pangit naman ng mga asawa nila kaya buy one take one ang pokpok sa ngayon,” the rugged looking chief of police quipped. 
“Now, I know why the prices of a whore in this city decline because more pokpoks joined the trade despite the weakening of the pesos, lethargic export state of the Philippines, and spikes of the prices of diesel and gasoline,” I told myself.
The analogy, I told my son, was more about The Law of Demand & Supply in High School Economics.
More pokpok, prices decrease. Less pokpok, prices increase. 

My gofer Galman who was still listening to our conversation irreverently butted again: Sir, totoo pala iyong sinabi ng Lola ko na naging Comfort Women ng mga Hapon noong panahon ng giyera, na “pag inflation lahat tumataas, panty lang ang bumababa!”

(You can read my selected columns at mortzortigoza.blogspot.com and articles at Pangasinan News Aro. You can send comments too at totomortz@yahoo.com)