“No matter how many people you know, it will always be yourself against the world.” –Victoria Dawn Monks

At the rate the Panay Electric Company (PECO) is being bamboozled by adversaries over the past few weeks, it will not be a surprise if lizards and mosquitoes soon mount a rebellion against the controversial Iloilo City power firm and claim victory. PECO appears to be the veritable punching bag of the season as the kicks and blows raining in from all directions seem to have reduced the former featherweight champion PECO to a minimum-weight contender.
Once upon a time, PECO was on top of the universe—no one would dare point a dirty finger at them without suffering the consequences. This was when PECO was still lording over the city’s power distribution system, buttressed by an official franchise. Even gutsy politicians who dared to cross their path found their way in the tail end of every election.
Already wounded from their puzzling skirmish with rival More Electric and Power Corporation, PECO recently took a wallop to the chin from the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC), which denied arranging a press conference with PECO in relation to 709 pole fires that occurred across the city over the past two years.
“ERC has no participation—in any manner—in the said [November 4] press conference,” ERC chair Agnes Devanadera affirmed.
Hardly had PECO recovered from the ERC-inflicted knockdown, when PLDT, through Vice President for the Visayas Rene Lescano, delivered a headbutt after calling PECO’s Public Engagement and Government Affairs head Marcelo Cacho a “liar” for blaming some pole fires on telco wires.
Others to leave kick marks on PECO’s face included the Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP), which reportedly recorded 138 pole fires attributed to PECO; along with Iloilo City Jerry P. Treñas.
According to a November 16 column by Limuel Celebria in The Daily Guardian, “Late last month, one of our columns (The Daily Guardian, October 26, Power Theft: a Growing Menace) raised concern over the numerous incidents of electric poles bursting into flames, threatening to set off conflagrations in the neighborhood. We attributed these cases of ‘spontaneous combustion’ (to use a colorful phrase) to the apparently unabated power theft going on in many parts of the city. The power theft or pilferage causes undue overload on electrical wires which melt and cause short-circuits or transformers to conk out or burst into flame. A couple of days following our column, City Mayor Jerry P. Treñas fired off an angry letter asking the Energy Regulatory Commission to investigate PECO over the same ‘pole fires.’ This time, however, the city chief executive placed the blamed squarely on the shoulders of PECO. The mayor’s heated communiqué, which was also sent to Malacañang, lashed at PECO for its dilapidated equipment and the poor maintenance of its distribution system.”
It is amazing how PECO has managed to overcome the whirlwind of karate chops that regularly bulldoze their gates in a dizzying screen episode called “PECO versus the world.”

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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