Brownouts: State of peril for May polls

To supposedly help solve the worsening power situation in Mindanao, President Gloria Arroyo declared the entire Mindanao area under a state of calamity. Since then, rotating brownouts continue to hit many parts of the country, further making the public nervous about a looming state of peril for the May 10 elections.

Presidential Spokesman Ricardo Saludo informed the media that the President, who was accompanied on her trip to Mindanao by Defense Secretary Norberto Gonzales and Secretary Jesus Dureza of the Mindanao Development Authority, has declared a state of calamity for the second largest island.

The declaration was triggered by a recommendation by Gonzales that was approved in less than 24 hours. Earlier, the Department of Energy proposed that Palace should declare a power crisis in Mindanao – a proposal which was also adopted by Arroyo.

The state of calamity declaration, according to a Inquirer.net report, will allow cities, towns, and provinces on the island to release 5 percent of their budgets so they can quickly procure generators to address the acute power shortage.

Inquirer.net’s report added that the total amount of funds that will be used can easily run into billions of pesos, a possible source of kickbacks for officials running in the May elections, especially because the procurement process is exempted from bidding.

Top presidential candidates Sen. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III and Sen. Manuel “Manny” Villar Jr. warned the Arroyo administration against using calamity funds for political purposes.

But Energy Secretary Angelo Reyes admitted what is glaringly troubling with the state of calamity declaration: it has no promise of restoring the power situation in Mindanao before the May elections, as procurement and installation of generator sets will take up to four months.

ABS-CBNNews.com reported that Mindanao, the region in the country that is most dependent on hydro power, has been experiencing power shortfalls and rotating blackouts since 2009 when the ongoing dry spell caused water levels in reservoirs to go below normal levels, causing six- to seven-hour blackouts.

The Palace was initially mulling the use of emergency powers, which was endorsed by the House committee on energy, to solve the Mindanao power crisis. It backtracked after apparently realizing the difficulty of calling for a special session of Congress since lawmakers are busy in electoral campaigns.

Proclamation without official text

Gary Olivar, deputy presidential spokesman, said in a Malacañang briefing that Arroyo would sign the draft state of calamity declaration on Friday "at the latest.'' But Friday has passed and still no official copy of the proclamation was released. The Office of the President website does not contain the full text of the declaration either.

In the absence of an official text, the Palace has instead issued a list of options under consideration under the state of calamity declaration in a press release dated March 11. Among the measures listed are: 1) enjoining companies and their workers to operate at night when power usage is low, 2) continuous conservation measures and rotating brownouts, and 3) mobilizing and releasing calamity funds.

Two days after she declared Mindanao under state of calamity, Arroyo told the media that she has issued a memorandum to Secretary Reyes and NDCC chief Gonzales detailing measures that need to be carried out to promptly ease Mindanao’s power problems, Philstar.com reported.

An Inquirer.net article said the President also ordered the application of automatic deloading or disconnection of demand between 6:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. which are the peak hours, the scheduling of manufacturing activities during the off-peak period between 9:00 p.m. and 5:00 a.m., and the implementation of energy-conservation measures.

Blackout, rotating brownouts

Ironically, the Mindanao power grid is heading toward worse situations even with a state of calamity declaration in place. The National Power Corporation has scheduled a total blackout in some provinces in Central Mindanao on Saturday, while the rest of the region experiences four hours of rotating brownouts following the shutdown of some hydroelectric turbines in the region.

Around 1,000 employees of 27 electric cooperatives spread in various areas in Mindanao may face retrenchment if the power continues to worsen, according to a Manila Bulletin report.

Since last month, a number of provinces in Mindano has been experiencing four- to six-hour rotating brownouts, while outages in other areas last for up to eight hours.

While hydropower plants in the south continue to reel from critical water levels, several Luzon power plants on Saturday bogged down due to “technical problems,” causing rotating brownouts in Metro Manila, Batangas, Bulacan, Cavite, Laguna, Quezon and Rizal.

Earlier this month, parts of Metro Manila and the rest of Luzon experienced two- to three-hour scheduled blackouts after power plants in Sual, Pangasinan and Masinloc, Zambales failed to provide sufficient power for the Luzon grid.

Power interruptions in many parts of the country did not pass without criticism. Labor center Kilusang Mayo Uno and Anakpawis Party-list said in a joint statement that the power outages are the “Arroyo regime’s muscle-flexing for sabotage operations for the coming May elections.”

Should a blackout plague Mindanao on election day, at least 3.49 million votes will be lost as estimated by this reporter based on the 2000 census data on the number of families in all regions in Mindanao with a voter. This highly significant number of votes can definitely alter poll results on all levels.

May polls in peril

And with the state of calamity declared in the south, KMU said the failure of May elections looms larger. It said that the declaration hints that “the government is bent on playing up the power crisis script” to condition the public for the failure of elections in May.

“Put it [state of calamity] side by side with rotating brownouts and sudden technical problems in Luzon power plants last week, and the failure of elections scenario comes into life,” it added.

Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chairman Jose Armando Melo admitted that while the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines have batteries that could run for up to 16 hours, any power interruption could hurt the security of the machines themselves, ABS-CBNNews.com reported.

The government has earlier assured the public there will be no brownouts during the automated elections on May 10, vowing to “take steps to make sure there will be no red, or even yellow, alert during the elections,” a GMANews.tv report said.

Stop blaming El Niño

Makabayan senatorial candidate and Gabriela Rep. Liza Maza warned that the the “power crisis is being artificially staged to force a situation where emergency powers are invoked and transparency in biddings and negotiations can be foregone.”

Meanwhile, the Association of Mindanao Rural Electric Cooperatives (Amreco), a group of rural electric cooperatives, suspects that “some sectors might be manipulating events to cause an artificial crisis” on the island.

“All these simultaneous stories, press releases? They all got into the media as if someone is masterminding all of these,” the group said.

Archie Orillosa of the Advocates of Science and Technology for the People (AGHAM) said in an Inquirer.net report that the government is pointing to the El Niño phenomenon as the cause of the supposed critical power supply situation in Mindanao and the country in order to justify many onerous policies like emergency powers to construction of new dams.

Obviously, the state of calamity declaration does not hold quick and viable solutions to the current power crisis in the south. So far, it has only generated added uncertainties for the upcoming elections and false hopes of recovery from rotating brownouts.