Tag Archives: meralco

Many things surfaced in the midst of this Covid-19 crisis. There’s the violence of inequality and the blindness of privilege. There’s the lack of vision and planning for a massive public health emergency that any government should’ve known was coming early in the year. There’s government’s incompetence and violence, the President in-over-his-head (yet again!), his men grasping at straws and deciding that going deeper into debt is the answer to our woes. There are Duterte’s cronies and allies, getting away with keeping their businesses intact and operational, probably even earning from this crisis, and now all set on getting a tax cut while thousands of small businesses will go under, and thousands of Filipinos go hungry.

There is also the fact that big business will abuse the people. It’s not a matter of when, but a matter of how. And the past four years this Duterte government has stood by and watched these abuses happen; during the lockdown it did nothing about construction workers left by developers to fend for themselves at construction sites, grocery workers walking inhumane distances to and from work, medical workers with no way to get home from hospitals.

With government turning a blind eye to these abuses, it’s no surprise that a business like Meralco will take this already difficult time and think: how do we make money in this time of crisis, when most everyone is taking a hit? (more…)

powerless

i hate it when government — anyone in power for that matter – responds to any crisis by falling back on prayer. the only thing worse than that is to have a president that uses prayer to talk about solidarity and “productive actions.” now have the Presidential Spokesperson Coloma say: “While we are praying, perhaps it is good if Filipinos would focus on what they can contribute to make our republic even stronger” and one realizes this whole discourse on solidarity in productivity is really about taking a jab at government critics — the ones who are going out on the streets on January 21 to protest the Meralco price hike, and certainly the ones who remain critical of this government’s inefficiencies / insufficiencies / incapabilities even as we are not out on the streets.  (more…)

What has Judy Ann done wrong by speaking for Meralco? She has, after all, sold practically everything.

Simply said, it is the fact that the truth she sells in the hotly contested ad is unlike any of the truths she declares in her other endorsements. In selling vinegar or ginisa mix, feminine wash and shampoo, laundry detergents and plastic ware, beer and diet pills, one can suspend belief and say, yes, those products may have worked for her, if not necessarily for others. (more…)