PANAY island became a stage for shadow play- we called it carillo, karilyo in Tagalog after Malaysian wayang kulit that used hand-held puppets to tell stories in darkness– after multiple power plants shut down on the second day of 2024. An advisory said that only Panay Island power facilities had shut down; the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) later stated that the entire Negros-Panay system had collapsed.

This prompted the government agencies to put the heat on the NGCP after it failed to intervene in the massive blackout in Western Visayas, citing that the corporation should have been more proactive with the situation and not wait for the system to close down.

And this is where the the karilyo began. Tales told in the dark.

On Friday, January 5, after the NGCP “fully restored” all affected feeders in Panay Island and “normalized transmission operations” in the area, the NGCP controverted the allegations of what they claimed as “problems” from unplanned shutdowns of power generators and stood firm that it did not fail in its obligation.

NGCP officials are now posturing the Chinese narrative of what is happening in the West Philippine Sea dispute: they remain brave and mendacious despite being obvious that they are the ones at fault. They have wom3 gumption and gall to question the policymakers after they were called out to assume accountability and abide by their mandate.

This negligence has sparked losses in the tourism, business, and service industries, with some provinces forced to suspend school operations.

The NGCP acted as if they were being used as a “scapegoat” and urged critics not to push political agendas at a time they were put in a bad light.

But what the nation witnessed is part of a shadow play: Chinese puppetry.

In short, the Panay power outage exposed more pressing concerns about national security. How the NGCP handled the massive blackout unmasked an advancing Chinese agenda – not for the betterment of the Filipinos. The arrogance exhibited by the NGCP does not seem to be very Filipino. As full-fledged Filipinos, our countrymen admit when they are wrong and take strides to fix it. Filipinos are accountable and responsible. Filipinos do not disrespect their leaders.

Even though the State Grid has a 40 percent stake in NGCP, the controlling 60 percent still belongs to other Filipino companies. However, experts have issued a warning on China’s capacity to use NGCP to dominate the Philippines’ electrical grid. In 2023, a report said that President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. mulls utilizing the Maharlika Wealth Fund to acquire State Grid Corp. of China’s 40 percent ownership in NGCP. Eliminating NGCP’s foreign partner, according to the report, would allay public fears about China’s potential ability to penetrate the Philippines’ electrical system or shut it down.

But with how this incident progresses, the NGCP told of how Chinese authorities harassed Filipino fishermen in the country-owned seas: arrogant, disrespectful, and misleading.

The NGCP is now positioning itself to be the right-hand of the Chinese moguls. Filipino executives at the NGCP are now being used as puppets by the Chinese to penetrate the industry and loot from the Filipino people – a well-orchestrated Chinese puppetry played in the dark.

In addition to revealing a flagrant disdain for responsibility, the unfolding events surrounding the wake of this outage have also called into doubt the security of the country’s electrical grid.

The display of arrogance and defiance from the NGCP should be rigorously looked into by the national government as the welfare of the Filipino people and the country’s economic upturn rely on secure and reliable energy, free from the shadows of foreign interference and puppetry. By Dong delos Reyes