During dear Tito Armand Fabella’s wake [ + 27 November 2008; our Valdes de Pampanga patriarch ] on 28 November 2008 at the gym of the Fabellas’ JRU Jose Rizal University, I found myself seated with Cousin Butch Valdes, the late Tito Charlie’s [ CJV’s ] son. I knew Butch and regarded him highly because he and my uncle Brother Andrew Gonzalez F.S.C. [ youngest brother of my father ] worked together at the “DepEd” Department of Education during the controversial Estrada presidency and they shared some downright difficult times as well. But that’s another story worth telling on its own.
Butch told me that within two years there would be a power shortage of +- 2,000 megawatts… We would again be suffering from those inconvenient blackouts and brownouts during the end of the Aquino presidency and the beginning of the Ramos.
He said that one solution — and indeed it would be imperative — would be the operation of the BNPP Bataan Nuclear Power Plant. It could supply much of the power deficit.
The Philippines had one of the highest electric power rates in Asia because we still didn’t have the benefit of nuclear power. I knew that well because my Korean sister-in-law kept on complaining how much cheaper, almost negligible, electricity was back in Seoul and Busan.
I hoped against hope that Cousin Butch’s prediction would not come true… I remembered how business in general really slowed down during the big power shortage of 1992-93.
But, lo and behold, here it is staring at us in the face!!!
Be that as it may, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo should not be christened “The Queen of Darkness Part II”…
remembrance of things awry 