“There are four kinds of Homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy.” –Ambrose Bierce

Despite losing their franchise in January, the Panay Electric Company (PECO) has refused to die; much like Grigori Rasputin, who was supposed to die after being made to eat a cyanide-laced cake. Like Rasputin, the mystical adviser in the court of Czar Nicholas II of Russia, PECO “lived on” even after its Energy Regulatory Commission certificate of public convenience and necessity expired in May. The utility firm “survived” and continued to operate by virtue of a transition after Congress passed RA 11212, which gave rival firm MORE Electric and Power Corporation the franchise to distribute power in Iloilo City.
The tsar’s nephew and his cohorts could not kill Rasputin with one strike and PECO survived after challenging RA 11212’s validity. They secured a favorable ruling from the Regional Trial Court in Mandaluyong City, which declared portions of the law illegal and unconstitutional.
Rasputin was only killed after being shot and beaten, then drowned in a frozen river. Like Rasputin, PECO, gasping for breath, fought for its life through Abang Lingkod partylist Rep. Stephen Paduano, who filed HB 4101 last month in a bid to grant PECO a fresh franchise.
Did PECO finally die on September 11, 2019 after the House Committee on Legislative Franchises unanimously struck down Paduano’s bill?

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Last Wednesday was my fifth year joining Americans in commemorating the 9/11 attacks that killed nearly 5,000 non-combatants.
As observed by Ian Bremmer of Time Magazine: “Every 9/11 anniversary that passes gets both easier and harder.
Easier, because time numbs pain, even the most searing and awful kinds of pain. Harder, because with time comes perspective, and 18 years later, the shock and enormity of those despicable acts continue to stand as one of the most atrocious deeds humans have ever perpetrated against one another. The passing of time also makes it harder because we can see more clearly the disastrous chain the events of that day kicked off, how they led to war in Afghanistan and then to war in Iraq, both wars that the U.S. is currently still waging. It’s hard to say that the world is safer place to live as a result of those wars. What we can say is that these wars have cost the U.S. plenty; trillions of dollars have been spent, thousands of lives have been lost, and U.S. global leadership has been forever tarnished, both in the eyes of those living in the U.S. and in the eyes of those living outside it.”

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Alex P. Vidal, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo./WDJ