Gibo stressed out before a thousand students and leaders of nongovernment organizations (NGOs) present at the presidential forum at the Ateneo de Davao University. The forum tackled about the urgency for a multisectoral concord on ordering innovative or existing power barges and escalating the power producing capability of industrialized users by letting giant companies to bring in their own generators on a tax-free basis.

“We need a 25-year or 50-year energy plan so that we can deal with the crisis while planting the seeds of addressing potential shortfalls in the future here in Mindanao and other parts of the country,” Gibo said during the “Panaghisgut-Hisgut” or the 2010 Mindanao Presidential Forum at the university’s Finster Hall.

Several regions for Davao and other areas of the South have been weighed down in the past weeks by rotating power outages ranging from three to 12 hours on a daily basis.

In addition to this, self-generators refer to power generation amenities for industrial or industrial utilization owned and built by private division end users.  Trade bodies typically spend funds in these facilities when economical, dependable and quality powers is not accessible or guaranteed by power utility corporations but are bound to pay taxes on such investments as permitted under the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (EPIRA).

Gibo stated that the government should consider nuclear power as one alternative to escalate the energy capacity of the country immediately to achieve energy sustainability.

Gibo previously said that the Philippines can gain knowledge from the United Arab Emirates situation, one of the world’s major oil exporters, which recently signed a $25-billion agreement with a Korean electric power company to build nuclear power plants.

“I don’t see the reason why we should not {explore nuclear power).  Filipinos used to run the plants in Korean and Japan, I think.  We can certainly do it here,” Gibo said.

“If before, the situation in Mindanao was a local problem, now it is part of the fundamentalist movement in the Middle East. There is now the al-Qaeda and it has already established links with our local Muslim rebels so it cannot be avoided that we are now part of the global war against this kind of fundamentalist terrorism,” Olivar said.

“We now have a role to play as a member of the global war (against terror),” he added.

Meanwhile, Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita welcomed the move made by Washington to retain the American troops in Mindanao. He even said that it would help sustain the success of the government in annihilating terrorism. Ermita is the chairman of the Anti-Terrorism Council and said that the move would “enhance our security in the area and help pave the way for development.”

Though Malacañang is happy with the presence of the US troops in the country, there are also those who are opposed to it. Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel Jr. acknowledged the contribution of the troops in the government’s campaign against terrorism but he demands an explanation on why the JSOTF are in Mindanao.

The senator wants to know if the joint operations task force in Mindanao is by virtue of the Mutual Defense Treaty, the Visiting Forces Agreement or any other security agreement between the US and the Philippines.

“The US is our ally. But if they have troops who are deployed in the country, they should not take part in combat operations against insurgents and other criminal elements here,” he said.

Senator Loren Legarda also supported Pimentel’s call. She expressed her concern over the news reports quoting US military and defense officials that tend to show that the American “elite forces” in the country have been actually engaged in the operations against Abu Sayyaf.