Proxy Wars and Power Plays

While everybody cringe at the cruel rise of oil prices, over at Meralco, things have heated to fever pitch. Today, stockholders of one of the country’s blue chip companies will battle it out for control of the utility firm. GSIS President and General Manager Winston Garcia is pessimistic of government desire to wrest control of the firm from the Lopezes, since, he presumes, this will be a proxy war. I hate to say it, but the very thing which Garcia is using to destroy the Lopezes, is the thing which would annihilate him and his allies come decision time.

However, PinoyObserver notes that the Lopezes continue to show haughtiness, especially in the way they handled suggestions about live television coverage of the Meralco stockholders’ meeting. Cong. Golez and the rest of the nation wants the meeting covered live. The Lopezes refused. The people know that stockholder’s meetings should be private. Yet, the very nature of their business dictates that there should be live coverage since Meralco is a utility firm. The entire nation wants to know what’s happening there.

In truth, I’m not supporting Meralco. My stand is to carve it out into different franchises to encourage competition. However, I am not supporting government bid to takeover Meralco now since we know for sure that the utility firm will just be given to Gloria’s allies, namely, the Aboitizes, Garcias and the Alcantaras. Surely, this crown jewel of the Lopezes deserve nothing more than a clean bidding process. It should be managed by groups with the national interest at heart. It’s okey for them to recover their investments, yet, there should be more consideration on the public’s consumer rights than business interests. And the Lopezes want nothing of this sort.