Telling it like it is

ne of the most shameful things that happened in 2021 was that failed blitzkrieg attempt of the thoroughly-discredited National Electrification Administration (NEA) to takeover BENECO, during the dawn hours of October 18, 2021.

With the help of a heavily-armed contingent of PNP personnel—all of whom are facing serious administrative charges today and could end up being dismissed from the service—two NEA lawyers, conniving with four disgraced former directors, broke into the cooperative’s offices, destroying property, locking out employees, briefly closing down South Drive and turning South Drive Barangay into a martial-law era military hamlet. All for just one purpose: to install a former Malacañan press release writer as “general manager” and fill up a vacancy that did not exist.

That person doesn’t know a thing about managing an electric cooperative, her claim to fame being hinged entirely on some sense of entitlement as a former minor factotum in Malacañan, a veritable “tao ni Duterte.”

It was a disgraceful move condemned by ALL local government units’ (LGU) legislative bodies. Both the Baguio City Council and the Benguet Provincial Board passed resolutions declaring lawyers Omar Mayo and Ana Marie Rafael as “persona non grata”—unwelcome in the City of Baguio as well as the province of Benguet.

The “PNG resolutions” themselves were welcomed by local chambers of commerce, professional groups, artist groups, labor groups, youth groups, academic societies—practically everybody. NEA really ended up hanging on a limb totally all by its lonesome.

The spontaneous and overwhelming “People Power” response that thwarted NEA’s embarrassing naked grab for power taught NEA a lesson it learned well and fast.

If it wants to devour BENECO, it cannot take it alive and kicking. It has to slowly and surreptitiously suffocate it to death first and then feed on its cold carcass later.

Public awareness about BENECO issues soared to record heights. Unfortunately, it is not in the interest of NEA to achieve clarity. Quite the opposite, it sought to muddle the issues by adding into the mix trumped up charges against the BENECO directors and officers whose valiant defiance of its shameful takeover attempt caused NEA to lose face. In the words of Manila Times columnist Isabel Ongpin, “NEA’s name is mud in Baguio.”

But unfortunately, there still also remains a lot of public misconceptions (including by Ms. Ongpin herself) about the internal affairs of BENECO. Right now, NEA is trying, and partly succeeding, in creating an impression that there is corruption and abuse galore in the Triple-A rated BENECO, even though it is NEA itself that pronounced its high performance efficiency evaluation. NEA, of course, does not need to PROVE any corruption, it just needs to allege it because for purposes of salvaging its tattered image, it has to plaster mud on the face of BENECO--and oftentimes IMPRESSION is all you need to create. Impression can be just as damaging than the truth, if not more.

The whole “inside story” is long and convoluted and, like I said, NOT in interest of NEA to clarify. And that is unfair because while maintaining a serene front, as though it was leaving BENECO alone, in reality it is keeping its tightening siege on it as vicious and virulent as ever, this time mostly out of sight and close observation by the public.

It’s cutting BENECO’s lifeline to the banks—suborning these banks into breaking every sound banking practice imaginable—to cite just one example. It also maintains a fake BENECO “website” and equally fake Facebook page, which continues to be the laughingstock of the whole cybercommunity in Baguio. It’s not only fake but daily emblematic of the horrible incompetence of the people behind it. Even a fifth grader can spell “electric” correctly, but not them.

So on January 29, 2022, the valiant defenders of BENECO will convene a Special General Membership Assembly, essentially to “loop in” everybody who is interested in preserving BENECO as a true peoples’ cooperative, empowering everybody with the truth they need to know, which has been kept from them for far too long. I urge everyone to go there.

A friend of mine challenged me to summarize the whole BENECO-NEA mess in one sentence, and I said I wouldn’t be doing justice. Then he said something that struck me deep: “That’s your weakness—you care about justice, propriety, fairness, decency, doing the right thing and all that motherhood crap. NEA doesn’t give one solitary droplet of shit about those things. So when NEA makes any pronouncement about BENECO, it’s always a reckless broadside, leaving it up to you to fill in the rest of the details. You should do that too, once in a while. Let THEM scramble to do the denying and explaining, for a change.”

“I don’t know if I can do that, or if I should. What I know is I can raise an alarm that people need to figure out how to respond to in each their personal way,” I said.

“Then say it,” he said.

In my view, what NEA seems determined to accomplish is simple: to turn BENECO from a Triple-A rated viable, efficient and lucrative public electric cooperative into a Triple-A rated viable, efficient, lucrative PRIVATE PROPERTY of some lucky business group close to Malacañan.

If you don’t come out and participate on January 29, if you prefer to stay in the comfort of not getting involved, you are helping NEA accomplish that.

“See? That wasn’t too hard to do, was it?” my friend said.