Senate President ProTempore Ralph Recto on Wednesday said energy officials should ensure that May 2 is “National No-Brownout Day” as any outage anywhere will make them turn into “punching bags” by people who would be deprived of watching on TV the mega fight between Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather.
Recto said the Executive branch should use the emergency powers it is asking and which Congress is poised to grant to prevent blackouts this summer, when electricity use is at its peak, “especially on May 2.”
Recto said just how effective the emergency powers of President Aquino will be tested on May 2.
“I think one promissory note we should be asking from the Department of Energy (DOE) is that there will be adequate supply of electricity on the day of the Pacquiao-Mayweather bout,” he added.
“If the people won’t be able to cheer Manny because power is out, they will jeer the government,” Recto said.
“You have the powers, you will have hundreds of millions of pesos, you have the time, so please see to it that there will be no brownout not only on May 2 but throughout summer,” Recto said.
Malacanang has invoked a section in the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (EPIRA) in asking Congress for emergency powers to contract additional capacity to avert an impending power crunch.
Section 71 of EPIRA states that “upon the determination by the President of the Philippines of an imminent shortage of the supply of electricity, Congress may authorize, through a joint resolution, the establishment of additional generating capacity under such terms and conditions as it may approve.”
Billed as the fight with the richest purse in history, the Pacquiao-Mayweather bout is on May 2 in Las Vegas, USA.