Albayanos strike back against APEC’s brazen avarice

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This article is available in Pilipino

NDF-Bikol lauds the Albayanos’ for standing up against almost a decade of San Miguel Electric Corporation’s Albay Power and Electric Corporation’s outright profiteering in the province. After eight years of subpar power service, unabated and exorbitant price hikes, the people has spoken: they are taking back what is rightfully theirs and are no longer willing to let APEC bully them around. Currently, Albay demands the highest electricity charge at around P18.66 per kilowatt hour. This is doubly debilitating as the Philippines is also among the countries in the world with the steepest electricity prices.

Being the capitalist fiend that it really is, APEC is now grasping at straws to ensure that it will be able to retain its target profit margin and regain back its capital. Officials are now obsessed with bending the Albayanos’ will by essentially blackmailing them with the withdrawal of their guarantee service while insisting on maintaining control over distribution, even stooping as low as saying, “damay-damay na” – sparing no one from their brazenly self-absorbed and absurd show of force. APEC is basically trying to damage-control and douse the people’s initiative by leading them to believe that power outages are unequivocal once the corporation yield control of the province’s energy supply.

But the Albayanos must not back down from these threats driven by APEC and its mother company, SMEC’s avarice. First of all, APEC is in no moral high ground to demand its capital back. Electricity is a basic service that the people has a right to have and not be burdened with. The Albayanos have already declared their opposition of the Albay Electric Cooperative (ALECO)’s privatization from the very start. It is in no way their fault for APEC to insist on grabbing onto the province’s electricity supply and distribution as their very own money-churning machine and bastardizing this supposedly public service into a grand business venture.

Demanding to complete their 25-year concession even amidst wide public disavowal betrays APEC’s singular fixation on how much wealth they can amass and milk from the masses for the longest time possible.

Secondly, Ramon Ang’s SMEC is one of the largest and most enduring profitmakers in the country. Even during the pandemic, SMEC’s revenue still reached P17.2 billion for the first quarter of 2021. This is more than a thousand-fold higher than its previous earnings in 2020 for the same time period. As of 2020, SMEC controls over a quarter of the whole country’s energy supply. Ang is also currently one of the top ten richest men in the country. So, to even imply that the SMEC or Ang will ‘lose money’ over APEC’s withdrawal in Albay is sheer nonsense.

The Albayanos has begun the struggle of putting an end to APEC’s greed. To see it through, they must remain adamant on their rightful demands and unities. They must continue the clamor and gain the support of the whole Bikol region as well as fellow consumers from all over the nation. Public officials must also continue on supporting their constituents and standing with them all throughout this momentous fight. Albayanos have long since proven the heights that their unbending unity can achieve – from the Lafayette mining operations shutdown in 2005 and their opposition of Balikatan Exercises in 2009. Let this be another lesson to anyone who seeks to exploit the Albayano and Bikolano people: never court the Uragons’ ire for they will always, certainly, strike back.

Albayanos strike back against APEC’s brazen avarice