SOMETHING tells us pretty face Dindin Baniqued, the city legal officer of Dagupan, is playing for high-stakes in the city government’s face-off with the Dagupan Electric Corporation.

Cards kept close to her chest, she is taking on Decorp, the main power distributor of the city, in preparation for more, and bigger, legal tussles with giants in the electric power industry, among these, the National Transmission Corporation (Transco) and possibly telecom agencies which, like Decorp and Transco, have their distribution poles within city limits.

If the court rules in favor of the city – and Dindin’s—arguments that the poles be taxed, it will be a bonanza for BSL’s cash-strapped government. But of course, the industry giants won’t give in just like that, they’ll be fighting tooth and nail to deny the city’s pie, or at the very least, pay only with a few slices. After all, Dindin knows only too well that’s how things ended with the suit she filed for the provincial government (when she was yet the provincial attorney) against the Mirant power corporation for real property tax dues.

A compromise deal, minus the interest payments, was finally struck with the power plant after a drawn-out litigation, to settle the whole thing once and for all and Victor Agbayani and provincial administrator Boy Solis collected, smiles writ all over their faces.

In this case of the electric poles, it would seem Decorp beat Baniqued to the gun though, bringing the battle to the city government instead by filing a case questioning the right of the city to tax electric poles of the company. From all indications, it will be a landmark case.

Atty. Baniqued who is fast earning for herself the monicker of “Power Company Slayer” might yet end up stringing laurels all over her pretty neck and fair shoulders or, if the wind blows cold, eating crow.

It’s a legal battle royale shaping up, folks; don’t even blink!

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Frankly, we’re just wondering how on earth a public utility can serve a community if the host community becomes so ungracious as to make it pay up for setting up facilities in its territory in order to better serve it. You might say – “but why not, it earns mega profits doing the “service?”

Okay. Still one must ask: How can a cook serve you the best dishes if you make him pay for the utensils and other cooking wares he uses to cook the dish?

We really don’t know which should come first: the fees or the service?
And that, we guess, is why Dindin became a lawyer, Yul Butuyan is a judge and Behn Hortaleza a nosey newsman-columnist.