REP. Danilo Fernandez of Santa Rosa City, Laguna province, got his name in the papers again this past week — which I am certain was his sole objective, since nothing of what he said to attract that media attention actually made any sense — with another attack on the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco), this time over a particular condition in its invitation to bid for 1,800 megawatts (MW) of electricity supply. As with his previous headline-grabbing moment, which was a harebrained rant about how Meralco's one large franchise ought to be broken up into three, Fernandez's latest canard is just as spectacularly wrong, and likewise just as glaring an example of why making the provision of vital public services subject to "legislative franchises" is one of the worst ideas this country ever had.
Fernandez, this time, has lost what little mind he had over the provision in Meralco's 1,800-MW invitation to bid that stipulates that only power plants in operation not earlier than Jan. 22, 2020, are eligible to join the bidding. The specification confirms that Meralco is a monopsony; Fernandez huffed and then, for good measure, used a string of other jargon to emphasize that he believes Meralco is trying to rip everyone off.
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