How PSEi member stocks performed — April 2, 2019
Here’s a quick glance at how PSEi stocks fared on Tuesday, April 2, 2019.
MORE stable electricity and competition
In a September 2017 paper, “Implementing the 10-point Socio-Economic Agenda,” the Arangkada Philippines Project (TAPP) made 22 recommendations for the power sector, among which are: (1) Support and approve the massive energy investments, (2) Increase the system reserve requirement to 25% of peak demand vs the current 17%, and (3) Formulate an energy road map (generation portfolio mix) with power supply quality, reliability and affordability as key objectives.
These are good recommendations to expand and ensure more stable power supply, more competition among more players, more consumer choices, and cheaper energy prices. Which are the main advocacies of the Market-Oriented Reforms for Efficiency (MORE) series in this column.
It is not possible to have sustained fast growth if there is no reliable, stable, 24/7 electricity in major economic centers if not nationwide. And the Philippines remains among the laggards in East Asia in terms of total electricity generation and kWh per capita. Then there is the persistent promotion plus subsidies to variable renewables solar and wind starting with the RE law of 2008 (RA 9513) but after 9 years, their combined output remains very small (see table).
The good news is that the Energy Virtual One Stop Shop (EVOSS) law has been signed as RA 11234 on March 8. This will hasten approval and permitting system in power construction and development.
In a paper, “When There’s Too Much Sun and Wind” (WSJ, March 10, 2019), Rupert Darwall (author of “Green Tyranny: Exposing the Totalitarian Roots of the Climate Industrial Complex”) argued:
“(T)he most destructive consequence of wind and solar power result(s) from periods of oversupply… Coal and gas plants have to be kept on standby and ramped up to cover the shortfall resulting from still air and darkness. That forces them to operate less efficiently and pushes their costs up. During periods of low demand, wind and solar can produce too much electricity, creating gluts and driving wholesale prices negative, meaning grid operators have to pay consumers to burn unwanted energy.”
While the Philippines is still far from having wind + solar oversupply, strong legislative and executive lobbying point to that direction.
The interest of electricity consumers — more stable electricity at cheaper/competitive price, no additional taxes and subsidies like the feed in tariff (FIT) allowance — should prevail over government, as well as the RE lobby and environmental NGO interests that oppose fossil fuel power plants which can provide stable, cheaper power.
Bienvenido S. Oplas, Jr. is the president of Minimal Government Thinkers
Facebook or Fakebook?
Poor Nic Gabunada. He is being crucified for being good at what he does. Gabunada, a former ABS-CBN research specialist, is credited with harnessing social media to help President Rodrigo Duterte win in the 2016 elections.
Recently, the administrators of the social media behemoth took down several Facebook and Instagram pages and allegedly fake accounts “for misleading others who they were and what they were doing.” Instagram is also owned by Facebook.
Gabunada has been linked to these accounts. According to media reports, “Facebook removed a total of 220 pages, 73 accounts, and 29 Instagram accounts. Among the pages taken down were Trending News Portal and Filipino Channel Online which had millions of followers, carried false information, including fake news against known opposition figures.
“It also announced the banning of Twinmark Media Enterprises, a digital marketing group from the Philippines for repeatedly violating the social media giant’s misrepresentation and spam policies, through actions that included ‘coordinated inauthentic behavior, the use of fake accounts, leading people to ad farms, and selling access to Facebook Pages to artificially increase distribution and generate profit.’”
At a media briefing, Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, said that the accounts and pages “were designed to look independent, but in fact we can see that they were coordinated on the back” and that they “work(ed) together to mislead others about who they are and what they are doing.”
Continued Gleicher, “What we saw is this cluster of these pages, groups and accounts — a combination of authentic and fake accounts — that were basically being used to drive messaging on behalf of and related to political candidates. They were designed to look independent, but in fact they are working together…They would post about local and political news, they will post about the upcoming elections, candidate views. A lot of the messaging were supporting candidates they were working in behalf of, some would be attacking political opponents of those candidates.”
Gabunada, while denying any connection with the questionable FB accounts, has complained that he and the group behind the accounts have been unfairly singled out because of their support for Duterte and administration candidates in the forthcoming elections.
Indeed, the question that deserves to be asked is: Aren’t the opposition or anti-Duterte social media postings equally questionable?
This brings to mind the only truthful statement that has been recently made by a politician, namely presidential daughter and Davao City mayor Sara Duterte to the effect that “all politicians lie.” (in the spirit of truthfulness, she did not exclude herself).
In this context, Malacañang spokesman Salvador Panelo denied having anything to do with the social media culprits. Said Panelo (with a straight face, we may assume): “I don’t think the President has anything to do with those Facebook accounts, which were initiated during the campaign or even during the assumption of his presidency. He doesn’t know anything about it.”
It makes you wonder who is more habitually truthful — Panelo or Trump’s press secretary Sarah Huckabee-Sanders.
With due respect to Gabunada, I don’t think there is any need for him to deny that he has anything to do with the questionable Facebook accounts and to insist that his name was linked to them without his permission or knowledge. He should hold his head high and declare with righteous indignation that anyone who wants to gain an advantage in politics has a right to be better than competition at harnessing social media. To use a cliché, it’s like building a better mousetrap.
Indeed, the administrators of Facebook will have more success cleansing the Aegean stables than strictly limiting the use of social media to positive, pristine, puritanical, truthful, benign and charitable purposes.
If they want to be absolutely strict about the truthful usage of social media, President Donald Trump should be forever banned from using Twitter. The Lying King and Lord of the Lies would probably have withdrawal symptoms if he were to stop lying in his tweets.
But Trump did not invent the Art of Lying. Nor was he the first to use the Internet and social media, as well as traditional media, as channels for punitive or self-serving political purposes.
The euphemism being used before was “communications management,” meaning the technique of managing and influencing the beliefs, attitudes and opinions of targeted publics through the “strategic” placement of messages in mass media. The advent of social media simply made the process easier to implement and the messages more widely and instantaneously disseminated.
In this regard, it may be assumed that the Russians have been experts in online “communications management” for some time, at least well before Trump ran for president. They simply spotted a likely asset in Trump because of his obsession with building a Trump tower in Moscow.
Like the Facebook administrators uncovering the questionable social media accounts in the Philippines, the team of special counsel Bob Mueller also exposed the Russian troll farm that had deployed moles and assets to influence the US elections.
But if you think that the US has been a helpless, hapless victim of the Russians, the Central Intelligence Agency will probably have a good laugh at that perception. Indeed, in this world of contending super powers, the name of the game is Spy vs. Spy.
There’s one more online trick that deserves to be uncovered. It’s Google bombing, the tactic of feeding a term or descriptive phrase online and associating it with a specific individual. During the incumbency of President George W. Bush, whenever one used a search engine and keyed in the words “miserable failure” or “incompetent,” the name George W. Bush would pop up. That was because these descriptions were purposely and maliciously associated with him.
Today, if you were to key in “mass killings in war on drugs,” the Philippines would pop up along with President Rodrigo Duterte. And if you key in “Filipina women,” unflattering entries pop up about our women (“for dating,” “5 reasons why Filipina women marry older foreign men”).
At any rate, it is one of life’s greatest ironies that such a marvelous development as the Internet and social media, with their ability to facilitate instantaneous communications worldwide and to wonderfully reconnect long lost friends and families, are being used to spread lies and disinformation, not just in politics but in everything else that people get involved in.
But the good outweighs the bad.
Wasn’t it social media that ignited the 2011 uprising against Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak? Would the Arab Spring have been possible without social media?
If social media had been available during the long years of the Marcos dictatorship (instead of just the mosquito press), wouldn’t People Power have happened sooner?
And speaking of the Marcos dictatorship, during the period of martial law, only a few courageous media people, chief among them Joe Burgos, Jr. of We Forum and Malaya, had the capacity to air their criticism of the regime. But if social media had been available at the time, the flood of attacks against Marcos and his minions would have reached tsunami proportions.
Of course, we can assume that the Marcos information machinery would have gone into full gear and would have organized a battalion of trolls, as well as controlled social media accounts, pages and postings. Facebook would have become Fakebook.
Doubtless, such sharp minds as those of Kit Tatad and Greg Cendaña would have matched the brilliance of Nic Gabunada.
Greg B. Macabenta is an advertising and communications man shuttling between San Francisco and Manila and providing unique insights on issues from both perspectives.
Challenging populist politics
The election spirit is in the air!
Aside from the regular holidays that many Filipinos hold dear, elections have always been a passion for the general population. With more than 18,000 local posts up for grabs, local participation is expected to be massive. Sadly, we can also expect more election-related violence as local elections are by nature more personal.
On a general scale, the upcoming May 13 elections represent three fundamental challenges that the present electoral and political landscape offer.
CONFRONTING POPULIST POLITICS
The first challenge refers to disputing the populist politics that has gained momentum under the Duterte administration. As elections may be associated with the popularity and clout of the incumbent president and his administration, it is important to note that Duterte continues to be popular and has retained a 74% satisfaction rating based on recent surveys. Such positive rating constitutes the political capital upon which supporters and followers could bank during the elections.
After more than two years in office, however, Duterte’s populist promises by and large proved to be mere political rhetoric.
True, there was the increase in the salaries of uniformed personnel and the upgrading of military logistics equipment and some measures that seemed impossible in the past decade, such as Free Tertiary Education, Free Irrigation Service, and the Universal Health Care Bill.
But many experts are apprehensive about the sustainability of these measures, as they require huge amounts of funding. Many also question whether these populist initiatives are timely since the government has also embarked on an ambitious P8-trillion infrastructure program until 2022.
Nevertheless, populist issues dominate the campaign platform of majority of the candidates. These issues strongly appeal to the emotions of voters, but the solution may not be rational and sustainable. In most cases, national candidates prioritize gut issues such as food, health, and education.
PLATFORM AND CITIZENSHIP
In the face of such populist politics, a viable alternative is to promote a program- or platform-based leadership and politics. Two things come to mind — while focusing more on the top national concerns of the Filipinos, i.e., controlling inflation, increasing/improving workers’ pay, reducing poverty, and creating jobs, the top personal concerns related to health, education, victimization of crime, and access to jobs should also be prioritized. And while offering an enduring solution to these problems instead of purely relying on palliative means, the programs and solutions should be realistic as well.
In exploring political platforms for the upcoming elections, the Stratbase ADR Institute through its project Democracy Watch commissioned a survey (December 16 to 19, 2018) on the “Qualities that One is Looking for in a Senatorial Candidate of the Philippines.” It showed that 25% of the respondents listed “will not be corrupt” as among the qualities they are looking for a senatorial candidate. By area, 25% of respondents in the National Capital Region, 26% in the rest of Luzon, 27% in the Visayas and 22 % in Mindanao said they are looking for candidates “who will not be corrupt.”
Accordingly, the top quality that Filipino voters look for in a senatorial candidate is “not corrupt.” Candidates who have “concern for the poor” emerged as the second top quality (22%), followed by “good personal characteristics” which was listed by 21% of the respondents, while the fourth top quality is “trustworthy.”
Other qualities cited by respondents include “has concern/helpful to those in need” (20%); “walks his talk/fulfills promises” (14%); “can give solutions to the problems of the country” (9%); “approachable” (7%); “has good leadership qualities” (6%); “knows how to listen and confer with other people” (5%); “has faith in God” (5%); “has political will” (3%); and “educated/intelligent/bright” (3%).
In neutralizing populist politics, the value of citizenship comes into the fore. Anchored on critical participation, the electorate should analyze a candidate’s credibility, competence, and integrity. These can be measured by looking into their education, experience, records, and advocacies/platforms. Further, the population should embody the democratic principle behind the electoral process — to empower responsible leaders and ensure democracy.
POLITICAL DYNASTY
Third, the act of making elections viable, participatory, and inclusive begs to question the predominance of political dynasties in Philippine politics. According to Dean Donald Mendoza, “the elimination of fat dynasties will free up to 25% of local government positions for the young up and coming leaders.” The elimination of fat dynasties thus makes democracy inclusive. This will counter the worrying trend that he observed between 2007 and 2016, in which the “dynastic share or the number of powerful clans per position rose from 75% to 78% among district representatives; 70% to 81% among governors; and 58% to 70% among mayors.”
Frustratingly, the Anti-Political Dynasty bill (and all its different versions) has been passed from Congress to Congress since 1987 and still remains pending.
As the battle against political dynasties and traditional politics is a long and winding struggle, the promotion of a program- and platform-based politics is the necessary first step. It is also a deterrent against the proliferation of strongman politics and populist leaders. It also addresses the crisis in the political leadership aggravated by the weak character of Philippine political parties.
Prof. Victor Andres “Dindo” C. Manhit is the founder and managing director of the Stratbase group and president of its policy think tank, the Albert del Rosario Institute for Strategic and International Studies (ADRi).