by Diego Morra
When Honore de Balzac said “behind every great fortune is a crime,” he was not only referring to potentates, the merchants of Italian cities and British colonizers along with Winston Churchill who brought famine to India and Africa. In fact, Filipino wags have paraphrased Balzac by saying “behind every great fortune is a mother.” That doting mother might refer to Senator Loren Legarda, a survivor in the dog-eat-dog environment of politics by advocating the economics of the environment.
Indeed, as one noted lawyer argued, the ever-doting mother in Loren honed her son Leandro Leviste to become a politician in the footsteps of his biological father and his mother, who belongs to a family with ties to the legislature controlled by American overseers. Loren was an understudy of the late Senate President Edgardo Angara, as was then Senator Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, both of whom cut their teeth and sharpened their fangs under the tutelage of Angara, the senator from Aurora and Marikina.
As a media creature, Loren knew how to manage her image and forage for nectar. Yes, seeking P3-billion in insertions qualify as foraging for food fit for the gods. Loren and son were supposed to have done that, DPWH sources alleged, only for the cadging duo’s bid to be rejected. Curiously, Loren claimed not to know what the term “allocable” means when it refers to the funds that were to be allocated per congressional district. It is fairly easy to understand why this “equal distribution” is more equal for others. During the time of then Rep. Ferdinand Marcos Jr., it was found out that among Congress members, he had the biggest number of projects nationwide. The report puzzled many lawmakers who forgot that from 1972 to 1986, the only surnames that bureaucrats knew were Marcos and Romualdez and Mendoza, the gatekeeper of the law. It was reported that the Ilocos Norte congressman was pleasantly surprised by the news.
For sure, nothing in the job description of Congress members is there a provision that they are entitled to bring begging bowls to the DPWH and secure their annual pound of flesh. Lawmakers are elected to craft legislation, debate on the propriety of laws and junk statutes that militate against the welfare of the Filipino people. The late Joker Arroyo rejected pork barrel just as current Senator Panfilo Lacson refuses to partake of the grease. It was because of pork barrel, which is the red meat tossed to the hungry dogs of politics, that caused a lowly DPWH engineer to get busted for purportedly offering P3.1 million to win the greenhorn lawmaker’s silence on dubious DPWH projects in Batangas. The young Leviste then turned his guns against another Batangas politician for allegedly hatching the “bribery” attempt. Giving a P3.1 million bribe to a billionaire is an insult to corruption.
Yet, aside from the ongoing showbiz-like political drama about the Cabral Files (like the Epstein Files battering Donald Trump), Leandro Leviste is now being raked over the coals for what he did to his solar power venture, an extraordinary renewable energy project for which he secured a legislative franchise. This is a strange concession for a promising young man who had nothing to show but promptly secured the green light to energize 16 provinces and 61 cities and municipalities with solar power plants. Like a magician wielding a wand, the Levistes won the consent of 16 senators who signed off on Republic Act No. 11357, which was an egregious exercise of parliamentary discretion that favored the son of a sitting senator with hardly any experience in power generation, much less in the technology caslled renewable energy. Why did no one in the Senate object despite the fact that RA 11357 is a patently abominable grant of a personal franchise to Loren’s son?
Call it an old boy network or old girls network but the conspiracy of silence is deafening. This is not a case of a doting mother asking for a higher grade for her son (which she is not supposed to do) but a case of nepotism running roughshod over ethical principles, which brook no violation of decency or decorum, much less the enactment of a law for selfish interest or to delude consumers. Commenting on this caper, a well-known public interest lawyer said the Dutertes and Marcoses never enjoyed such personal franchise. To provide altruism to a brazenly personal franchise, RA 11357 was crafted to purposely “bring cheap solar power to ‘remote and unviable, unserved, or underserved areas.’”
Indeed, some are more equal than others. Leandro Leviste, the idealist, according to his mother, was set to bring light to the fastnesses of Luzon, the Visayas and Mindanao. Such lofty ambition for the Yale dropout, commented a critic, and a profitable one as renewable energy (RE) companies enjoy higher tariffs, the better option for them to recoup their investments. Leviste’s Solar Power New Energy Corp. (SPNEC) enjoyed such pampering from the Duterte regime that other companies shied away from the market. With the company enjoying publicity in the broadcast and print media, many people thought that SPNEC was manna from heaven. They are damn wrong. SPNEC was long on promise but short on accomplishments. No less than 21 of its service contracts were scuttled by the Department of Energy (DOE) for failure to meet their targets and work programs. SPNEC missed deadlines for six projects under the 2021 Green Energy Action Program (GEAP), with nothing under construction. A total of 84 contracts were scrapped representing 5,372 megawatts (MW) of power.
Worse, Leviste sold his majority stake for P30 billion within five years of the grant of the franchise, in direct subversion of the provision of RA 11357. Section 18 of RA 11357 states: “Section 18. Sale, Lease, Transfer, Grant of Usufruct, or Assignment of Franchise – The grantee shall not sell, lease, transfer, grant the usufruct of, nor assign this franchise or the rights and privileges acquired thereunder xxx NOR THE CONTROLLING INTEREST OF THE GRANTEE xxx without the prior approval of the Congress of the Philippines. Was there ever any congressional approval for the sale of Leviste’s stake in SPNEC? If there was none, then a congressional inquiry is in order, whether Leandro likes it or not. This should goad all the senators who granted the Levistes the license to flay the law should now explain why they coddled the mother and son team. These senators and ex-senators are: Grace Poe, the principal sponsor; Juan Edgardo “Sonny” M. Angara; Nancy S. Binay; Franklin M. Drilon; JV Ejercito; Francis “Chiz” G. Escudero; Sherwin “Win” T. Gatchalian; Richard J. Gordon; Gregorio B. Honasan II; Risa Hontiveros; Panfilo “Ping” M. Lacson; Francis “Kiko” N. Pangilinan; Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III; Ralph G. Recto; Vicente C. Sotto III, and; Cynthia A. Villar.
