COMING UP FOR AIR: As expected, the State of the Nation Address of President Arroyo was greeted with the usual predictable sneers from the opposition and the cheers from the administration camp.

The man in the street, meanwhile, cannot care less. After all, speeches hardly register in his mundane life. Also, statistics in this country, especially those inserted in accomplishment reports of government, are subject to on-site validation.

But while we suspend judgment on the true state of the nation, we take the President’s SoNA in good faith. We prefer to look at her report as a kind of coming up for air for her 17-month-old administration drowning in inherited problems.

By “coming up for air,” we mean that with GMA’s resolve to do better in the coming year, her SoNA should be a signal for all friendly and neutral forces to give the Arroyo administration a chance to do its job and build a Strong Republic.

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BRING IN YOUR BRICK: It is every Filipino’s duty to contribute his own brick to building the edifice of that Strong Republic envisioned by the President even while hostile winds swirl around her.

After all, despite the obstructionism of partisans who still cannot accept reality, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo appears to most people as eminently prepared for the daunting demands of the presidency.

She is the only president we’ve got at this point and in the foreseeable short term. Let’s stay with her. Let’s give her, and ourselves, a chance.

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FLIGHTY SONNY: It’s now clear that Sen. John “Sonny” Osmena only wasted his one vote and threw away political capital when he abandoned the administration majority in the Senate and embraced the opposition.

With erstwhile opposition Sen. Robert Jaworski crossing over to the camp of Senate president Franklin Drilon, Osmena’s flighty behavior has not weakened the pro-administration senators’ majority control of the chamber. Osmena now finds himself outside looking in.

The Cebuano senator will lose the powerful committees that were his reward for going to bed with the opposition. The committees would have been useful as they are potential weapons against political enemies and tools for harassing targeted businessmen.

Sen. Blas Ople’s impending (?) departure from the chamber upon his acceptance of a Cabinet post and the reported plan of one or two more opposition senators to join the Drilon majority will further marginalize Osmena.

(We placed a question mark after Ople because, with the majority already in the bag, President Arroyo could just change her mind about recruiting him into the Cabinet. In short, with Jaworski having moved faster, the ageing Ople’s market value has dropped.)

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REDUCING PARTICULATES: Our Postscript (21July02) on coal-fired power plants polluting the air, bloating the cost of electricity, and making some well-connected individuals overnight multimillionaires elicited interesting reactions from readers and insiders of the National Power Corp. (Napocor).

Chemical engineer Newell E. Dimen of Bensalem, Philadelphia, who has extensive experience with air pollution control, asks if the coal-fired plants in the Napocor system have any air pollution control equipment for reducing the risk from exposure to the exhaust gases.

We doubt it, considering that many of these plants are designed, built and maintained with the least regard for pollution control.

Dimen said that particulates from these dirty plants — NOx (nitrogen oxides) and SO₂ (sulfur dioxide) emissions — can be reduced by using air filters, scrubbers, electrostatic precipitators or combination of these three equipment. (Information on these equipment are available to those interested.)

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ATONG INTO COAL, TOO?: A Napocor executive told us, meanwhile, that some of former President Erap Estrada’s cronies were literally into “dirty money” that soiled their hands and polluted the environment.

The official said Estrada’s alleged bagman Charlie “Atong” Ang, now in a Las Vegas jail, headed a syndicate that cornered the juicy contracts to purchase coal for the Napocor and the plants it has been servicing.

Whatever bidding the Napocor held were a sham, the executive recalled. Before a bid, he said, Ang would gather the bidders into a room and then declare one of them the winner.

Those who defied Ang were reportedly given a hard time in the processing of their contracts by the Presidential Management Staff. That was when all contracts above P50 million went through the PMS.

To mollify the losing bidders, an offer of a slice of the coal purchase allocation was reportedly made, with the condition that they also contribute to Ang’s kitty.

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EVERYBODY HAPPY: The power industry insider said a commission of as much as $3 per ton of coal went south to Ang and his patron. Note that Napocor was then buying as much as nine million tons of coal.

Napocor still buys anywhere from P18 billion to P10 billion of coal annually to run the old, rickety plants in its system. Imagine the commission on that!

To make sure that everybody was happy, the source continued, there was also something for “the boys” — referring to some Napocor employees and executives. Bidders reportedly gave them $0.50 for every ton of coal, or a cool $3.8 million for a single purchase. In fact, at the time Estrada was booted out of office, Ang still owed “the boys” the equivalent of P100 million, the source said.

Ang, btw, is set to be extradited to the Philippines to face plunder charges along with former President Estrada.

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‘INSPECTION’ JUNKETS: The official said that the practice of rigging bids and pampering Napocor officials and executives temporarily stopped when GMA became president.

For instance, while Napocor president Jesus Alcordo was on leave, the state utility firm reportedly revived the questionable practice of sending its personnel to countries from where the coal was being imported.

In the first quarter of this year, some 20 Napocor officials and employees were sent to China, Indonesia, and Australia, for “pre-shipment inspection.”

However, an insider said that these inspections were plain and simple junkets that saw traveling Napocor personnel doing nothing more than sitting back and enjoying it while they were wined and dined by coal traders and sellers.

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GREENPEACE IN SUAL: Note the story and picture in yesterday’s STAR about activists on a Greenpeace ship protesting and trying to block the delivery of coal to a power plant in Sual, Pangasinan.

The activists, who were on a Clean Energy campaign in Southeast Asia, said that the Sual coal-fired plant was one of the five most problematic (polluting) power plants in the country.

With coal universally recognized as a “dirty” fuel, it is a wonder many Napocor plants are still dependent on it. We refuse to believe that the fat commissions going around make officials close their eyes to the hazards that coal poses.

Why does it take foreigners to open our eyes to our own serious environment problems?