Belmonte: House willing to give Aquino emergency powers

President Benigno Aquino III AP FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines — The House of Representatives is amenable to granting President Benigno Aquino emergency powers to address the looming power crisis, Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. said Tuesday.

“[It is] long overdue. Many people [have been] urging him before,” he said in a text message.

Belmonte said the country’s thinning power reserves, and outages resulting from this, were a big problem which Energy Secretary Jericho Petilla was “late in acknowledging.”

But now he said it was up to Aquino to specify what sort of emergency powers he wanted. “Exactly what is this emergency power they want? House will surely give it,” he said.

Eastern Samar Representative Ben Evardone, an administration ally, said he fully supported Petilla’s proposal to grant Aquino emergency powers to deal with a looming power crisis.

“The fear of several quarters that it might be abused is totally unfounded. The emergency powers will be limited to addressing the acute power supply shortfall only,” he said, adding that he has filed a bill empowering the President to construct power plants.

But the House committee on energy chairman, Oriental Mindoro Representative Reynaldo Umali, said there was a need to establish first “if there really is a crisis.”

“Supply is a thin. But then whether or not there’s a crisis is another matter,” he said, noting that during the first briefing of the energy committee, Petilla had talked about possible problems cropping up in 2015.

“And I don’t know if his concern has heightened to a crisis since then,” Umali said.

Petilla earlier admitted that the country might have a thin power supply reserve in 2015, and that additional generating capacity was needed to avert a power crisis next year.

He proposed the granting of emergency powers to Aquino to allow the contracting of modular power plants from Dubai and the United States that could be installed in four to five months. The mini power plants can generate anywhere from two to 30 megawatts on short-term contracts.

“I fully support the granting of emergency powers to deal with the power crisis but this should be specifically defined by Congress through a joint resolution by the House and Senate,” Valenzuela City Representative Sherwin Gatchalian said.

He said Petilla’s proposal made sense as “no new power plants can be installed in the next two years since natural gas pipe plants can take two to three years to build while coal-fed plants take three to five years to install and become fully operational.”

But the proposal drew opposition from Bayan Muna Representative Neri Colmenares, who said granting Aquino emergency powers would be dangerous.

“It is very dangerous to grant emergency powers to anyone with a dictatorial propensity  like President Aquino, as can be seen with his usurpation of Congress’ power and now threatening the Supreme Court when it declared the Disbursement Acceleration Program unconstitutional,” he said.

Colmenares said he has proposed a bill which will, among others, prohibit the government from selling what is left of the government’s energy assets and infuse capital to rehabilitate and increase the capacity of these plants, and order the Department of Energy to use the P175 billion Malampaya funds to construct power plants especially those that utilize renewable energy.

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