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If oxygen were up for privatization, expect the Villars to bid first. Their empire has already conquered land, and they’ve ventured into water and light. Wherever there’s a vital need, they are there, offering the illusion of service in exchange for a monopoly contract and the slow strangulation of a city or province.
It’s an undeniable fact that in many towns, cities, and provinces, taps run dry. It’s all over mainstream and social media. Yet the Villar coffers overflow. This is not merely mismanagement but a dehydration campaign in the guise of a joint venture.
Right smack in the middle of all this madness is PrimeWater, the utility arm of one of the country’s most enterprising political dynasties — real estate tycoons moonlighting as public servants, or perhaps the other way around.
Take the case of Malaybalay City, the capital of Bukidnon. Since 2020, many of its barangays have been suffering waterless days thanks to PrimeWater’s takeover of the city’s water system. The deal, laughably labeled “service,” was hammered out allegedly without feasibility studies, without public bidding, and without the consent of those now boiling water from dirty sources and nursing their fury.
Residents bathe by midnight shifts. Bakeries close not for lack of flour but because there’s no water to knead dough. In some areas, people can’t even wash their socks. After five years, the once-functional Malaybalay City Water District is now a hollow shell, surviving on a skeleton crew. Its assets have been pawned for a mere P15 million annually, while PrimeWater rakes in over P100 million a year from the city.
The Commission on Audit (COA), which is no radical watchdog, called the arrangement “repugnant to the law.” That’s bureaucrat-speak for “we want to scream but can only type.” Yet legality is a farce when political dynasties write laws to legitimize the kind of deals those laws should prevent.
At the top sits Paolo Villar, who runs PrimeWater through Prime Asset Ventures Incorporated, the company that profits while communities go thirsty. He is the eldest of 2013 presidential contender Manny Villar’s children, brother to a sitting senator, Mark, and a senator-elect, Camille, and one of the heirs to a political-commercial conglomerate whose reach is only rivaled by its sense of entitlement. Ah, lest we forget, the mother, Cynthia, is an outgoing senator, still “diligently legislating” while the family business privatizes life itself.
The Villar business model is simple: enter a locality, promise modernization, sign a lopsided joint venture agreement, dismantle the local water district, blame nature, and bill the people. Former Malaybalay Water District general manager Jun Aroa calls it “large-scale estafa.”
Malaybalay isn’t the first to fall, and it won’t likely be the last. If I counted it correctly, there are at least 26 provinces and cities in Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao where PrimeWater is making people’s lives miserable, based on a list shown to me by Rappler senior investigative reporter Lian Buan. Yes, that many. And yet Lian says it’s not even the full list.
During the Duterte administration, PrimeWater struck between 73 and as many as 130 joint venture agreements nationwide. The figures vary depending on whether one asks government officials or civil society groups. But there you go: Rodrigo Duterte again!
Prime darkness
If you think the farce couldn’t reach further, look at Siquijor province, the mystical island enduring daily 20- to 22-hour blackouts courtesy of another Villar-linked firm under the same umbrella of Prime Asset Ventures.
Siquijor is suffering from daily blackouts, not brownouts. (A blackout means complete loss of electricity. In contrast, a brownout is a reduction in voltage that causes lights to dim and may affect the performance of electrical appliances, though power is not entirely cut off.)
The Villar group was mandated to power the island province, again under Duterte’s watch. What people got was darkness, rotting food, and likely all the diseases and ailments that come with it.
No power, no water, no accountability. Just relentless branding. It makes one wonder whether it’s the power crisis that’s killing Siquijor or the government complacency that accepts it.
These tragedies, from the empty buckets of Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao to Siquijor’s flickering bulbs, are chapters from the same playbook. They happen because the government and politicians-cum-business tycoons treat necessities as commodities, and people as customers without refunds.
While helpless citizens boil water to drink, bathe in shifts, and watch businesses die, the Villar business and political dynasty swells, fueled by joint ventures, shielded by influence, and applauded by a political culture that confuses wealth with leadership.
There’s a word for this: plunder. Another: betrayal. And one more: blueprint. The Villar firms are not failing; the system is working exactly as intended.
We will know things have gotten worse the moment people stop asking when the water and power will come back and start wondering what’s left to be sold. Air? Time? Hope?
Air is probably already in committee hearings. After PrimeWater, PrimeAir? (First five minutes free, then it’s pay-per-gasp. Breathe fast, die cheap.)
PrimeTime probably comes next. (Miss a payment, and everything stops. Try to keep going, but the body can’t. Late fees can cause memory loss and fast aging.)
Hope? That’s gone. It was auctioned off again during the last election cycle. People cast their ballots, the dynasty profits. Simple. Clean. Efficient.
This political dynasty and its moneymakers don’t really provide services. They suck the life out of basic needs and sell it back to consumers at a premium. They slap a corporate logo on everything. This family turns water into profit, darkness into dividends, and people’s suffering into a marketing plan.
Where there’s a basic need, they show up, smile politely, and tell people that they’ve come to help, and hand them their bills for lousy service, if not outright disservice.
So don’t ask when the next blackout or dry tap is coming. Rather, ask what’s left to be sold. It’s because while people are waiting for water to trickle past midnight or wishing for a full battery charge, the Villars are likely placing bids already on the right to breathe air or take a dump.
To those entertaining the idea of drafting counterbids: good luck outbidding a dynasty with the government on speed dial. The Villars are already way ahead. Pastilan. – Rappler.com
