By Robert B. Roque, Jr.
In recent years, the dream of a clean energy-reliant Philippines was an advocacy championed by a young businessman bravely venturing into solar power generation. He carried a good name and an even more commanding brandname, Solar Philippines.
And just like fairytales, it was a story many wanted to believe – that of an advocate becoming one of the country’s youngest self-made billionaires. But something always bugged me about it. Too good to be true.
You don’t just watch a guy with zero track record snaring energy deals left and right at the snap of a finger. For Leandro Leviste — whose mom happens to be a senator — the jackpot deals came easy. But his promise of solar salvation… well, that’s a different story. More like fiction.
Finally, the Department of Energy (DOE) has awakened from the dream, and what it did recently was a reality check: scrapping 33 renewable energy (RE) contracts of Solar Philippines. The DOE calls it part of a wider cleanup of 163 contracts that are delayed or fatally flawed.
Of the nearly 18,000 megawatts canceled in this clampdown by the DOE, a staggering 64 percent belonged to Leviste’s firm. That’s roughly 11,000 megawatts that existed mostly on the young legislator’s PowerPoint.
DOE Secretary Sharon Garin said they patiently waited, hoped, bent over backwards for these projects to roll out, but nothing happened. Now, DOE wants penalties dished out — very serious ones that possibly run up to P24 billion!
Congressman Leviste will have to learn a lesson Sen. Loren Legarda probably failed to get across to her dear son: you don’t give free prizes to kids with ambition. Clearly, you don’t hand out strategic energy futures to a neophyte who thinks he’s Superman. Yes, he may get the deal, he may win a term in Congress, but he’s got to deliver. For in energy, as in politics, delivery is everything.
No epal, please!
The late Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago called them out long before it was fashionable. She even gave them a name — epal — and tried to outlaw the political pest who turns public service into a personal billboard. Her proposed anti-epal bill may not have passed, but the wisdom behind it just did.
She’s definitely who I remember when DSWD Secretary Rex Gatchalian put his foot down and ruled to bar politicians from hovering over “ayuda” distribution and payouts. The good secretary knows all this is backed by the 2026 national budget — from taxpayers’ money — so he draws a clear line that no faces, no names, no grandstanding could be allowed during AICS and similar handouts.
Elections are still two years away, yet some politicos already can’t resist mugging for cameras while the poor line up for help. It’s absurd. It’s shameless. And it’s precisely the behavior Miriam warned us about.
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