CIVIL WAR: Seeing the object of their loathing still sitting unperturbed in the Palace despite their mighty efforts to dislodge her, professional Arroyo-bashers have stepped up the virulence of their rhetoric.

They are now warning that if President Gloria Arroyo does not step down as quickly as they want, she could bring upon her family's and the nation's heads a rainstorm of blood and fire.

They are now predicting a civil war -- Filipinos fighting fellow Filipinos in the streets -- as they egg pro and anti elements into taking opposing sides in the bloody showdown playing in their minds.

The question before the nation now is whether or not Filipinos will allow themselves to be stampeded into violence just to help install into power another set of politicians.

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MAKING A CHOICE: Threatening civil strife is meant to (1) make President Arroyo feel responsible for the nation's possibly being torn to pieces, and (2) scare the population into pressuring their president to step down to avoid bloodshed.

The sad part is that while the scare tactic just bounces off President Arroyo, it might escalate enough to disturb the peace, dampen the economy, scare investors and tourists, and erode development gains made so far.

And the odd thing is that the occasional street protests being magnified as presaging a revolution in the making are mainly a phenomenon in the national capital. The rest of the country is generally calm and composed.

Bottom line: Are Filipinos willing to join the merchants of hate and violence threatening a civil war?

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SCAM SET: Meantime, while we were being told stories of alleged corruption in big-ticket projects financed by Chinese loans, the entrenched operators making dirty billions in the power sector have been quietly at work.

The usual cabal has been salivating for another killing in the procurement of overpriced coal for controlled power plants as another artificial power crisis appears being created to justify emergency purchases.

The state-run National Power Corp. has dropped the fuel budget and re-issued an open invitation to coal suppliers for the thermal coal requirements of the Pagbilao, Sual, Naga-Cebu and Masinloc plants due to record-high prices and tight supplies in Asia.

The situation appears ripe for another multi-million-peso rip-off.

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NAPOCOR BID: An invitation posted on Napocor's website last Feb. 15 called for financial proposals on a cost-freight basis. Suppliers had until Feb. 29 to submit their offers.

Interestingly, Napocor has not secured bids for 455,000 tons of coal for the Sual and Masinloc plants after Chinese and Indonesian miners said they either found the government's budget of $125-140 per ton too low or they had inadequate supply.

With China, a long-term exporter of coal, having suspended foreign sales to serve local needs, opportunistic merchants have raised their price of coal (with 6,500 kcal) for Asia to a staggering $160 per ton.

As demand for coal continued to rise, prices hit this month record levels of around $140-160 per ton at Australia's Newcastle port, a benchmark for Asia. This came about after supply disruptions in key coal-exporting countries, such as China and Australia.

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WHO POCKETS IT?: Napocor earlier said it needed 3.47 billion tons of coal to keep its plants in Sual, Pagbilao and Naga Cebu running this year.

Independent power producers (IPPs) in the Napocor network are not allowed to buy or import their own fuel. By contract, they have to get it from or through the Napocor, which buys from China, Indonesia and Australia.

Who gets the usual overprice, if any, and the commission? An audit, or maybe a criminal investigation, is in order.

This critical fuel situation should not have happened had Napocor heeded the call to forge bilateral long-term contracts (about 75 percent of coal requirements) with coal-exporting countries.

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THE TRICK: We used to be assured that whenever the price of coal fluctuated, electricity prices remained stable, because coal purchases were covered by long-term contracts.

What happened was that, according to insiders, the Napocor mafia connived with some local coal traders and politicians for profits and commissions. They reduced to at least 50 percent the long-term contracts, with the rest being on short-term or spot-trading basis.

Sources said that there are two local firms identified with the past administration benefiting from this scheme of emergency purchases at higher prices.

These firms reportedly use the higher Platts and Barlow-Jonker price index but actually get cheaper coal from Indonesia and re-sell it using the above-named price index.

Coal from Indonesia was priced at $100 per metric ton (6,500 kcal) in January-February 2008 using the Indonesian coal price index, while the Platts and Barlow-Jonker index is now pegged at $160 per metric ton!

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MODUS OPERANDI: The modus operandi of the Napocor gang last summer was to maintain a low inventory of coal to create an emergency. Once supply dwindled (as planned), Napocor conducted bidding for short-term deliveries of coal with a very low bench price.

Naturally, the very low bench price resulted in a failure of bid, since no supplier participated. The bid failure led to negotiated purchases, and a killing was made.

That happened last April 17, when a sudden brownout struck parts of Luzon. Napocor said the outage was caused by a jump in electrical consumption and a shortage of fuel, principally coal.

But sources said the brownout was just a coverup for another multi-million-peso scam.

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