Ike Señeres  IT is always good to meet people who are kindred in spirit with you, and that is why it was a pleasant surprise to meet two officials from the Chamber of Commerce of the Philippine Islands (CCPI) led by my friend Atty. Ramon Pedrosa who is the Chairman Emeritus and Mr. Jose Luis Yulo who is the President. Of course, Mr. Yulo became my friend too. CCPI is the oldest chamber of commerce in the Philippines and as a matter of fact, it was the precursor to the present day Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PCCI). When we met, I reminded Atty. Pedrosa that the last time we met was at the Tent City in the Sebastian Ugarte Football Field in February 1986. At that time, the Tent City was set up as a continuing center of activist to protest the Marcos Regime and to call for its ouster. I reminded Pedrosa that the activists from the Tent City were among the first to go to Edsa to join the People Power Revolution, because we were already nearby, and we were already organized. To my surprise, he reminded me in turn that the late Cardinal Jaime Sin actually called on the people to go to Edsa, because he knew that there were already people who were in the Tent City and were ready to go. About a year ago, I talked to my friend Mr. Dindo Fernando from the Ayala Group, requesting him to put a marker at the approximate site of the Tent City. I also reminded him about what I remember as the “promise” of the Ayala family at that time, not to “touch” the Ugarte Field in honor of the historical value and memory of the Tent City. The rest is history now, because most of the Field has been “touched”, and what remains is a small portion of an open field that is now fronting the Ayala Triangle, now a food mall. To cut a long story short, Pedrosa and I agreed to remind the Ayalas about their “promise”. While we are on this subject, I also remember now that up to now, there is no marker or monument that has been placed on the approximate site in what used to be an open field where ordinary people, actually civilians successfully stopped the onslaught of battle tanks and armoured vehicles who were in turn supposed to stop the people from moving forward towards the military camps. As it is now, there is already a Shrine for the Our Lady of Edsa, but that is really for a different purpose. Perhaps just like the Ayala family, the Gokongwei family might want to look into this need, because they own the mall that was built over the exact historical site. To paraphrase what Mr. Yulo said, we need to create more jobs in order to make our economy grow. He said that to do that however, we need to build more factories. To build more factories however, we need to have cheaper energy and that is how he introduced the advocacy of CCPI to revive the operation of the Bataan Nuclear Plant. While the decision to reopen the plant or not will still go through a long debate; there is no doubt that we really need cheaper energy no matter where it will come from. There appears to be many reasons why factories are closing here and why their owners are taking the jobs elsewhere, but hands down, the more dominant reason is the energy cost. Quite sadly, Pedrosa and Yulo pointed out that our country was one of the five founders of the Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean), and yet we are now number five only in the Asean, after many years of a declining trend. They pointed out that at one time, we were number one in the Asean and from another perspective our country was number two in Asia, second only to Japan. In between their explanations, it was clear that our products have to be globally competitive, but we could only produce competitive products if we have cheaper energy costs. From a macroeconomic perspective, it is very clear that many years of defective economic policies are to blame for our pattern of decline. From a microeconomic perspective however, it is also clear that weak energy policies are also to blame for the continued increase of our power costs. Not being an economist myself, I shared with them my two cents worth, that perhaps it is time to enrich the talent pool of the National Economic Development Authority (Neda) with economists from other schools such as Ateneo, La Salle and UAAP, considering that Neda has been dominated by UP economists all these years. After all, it is time to rethink whether or not we should still continue to be influenced by the Bretton Woods economics or not. Perhaps our decision to go either way will determine whether we could be number one in Asean again or not.   Email: bantaygobyerno-subscribe@yahoogroups.com