Arthur Fuentes

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Boardroom Tea

Salve Ibaňez

<div><strong>The Day Everything Unraveled</strong></div><p>It was supposed to be another routine Monday at the Energy Regulatory Commission. Instead, Chairperson Monalisa Dimalanta dropped a bombshell that reverberated through the halls of power faster than a Meralco rate hike announcement. Her resignation—described as “irrevocable” in the formal letter—made her one of the most talked-about ERC chairmen in industry history.</p><p>But here’s what the press releases didn’t capture: Dimalanta had been considering her exit for weeks, not out of defeat, but as the ultimate strategic move in a three-year chess game.</p><p>“They told me I would be removed anyway,” she revealed during our Zoom call this past Monday morning. “The question became: do I fight for my seven years and potentially damage the institution, or do I preserve the agency’s integrity by making a clean exit?”</p><p>The irony wasn’t lost on anyone paying attention. The woman who spent three years pushing for transparency in every commission decision chose the most transparent exit possible—a clear, unambiguous resignation that left no room for backroom maneuvering.</p><p>The battles she had fought at every turn—the Nasecore complaint that caused a six-month suspension by the Ombudsman, the Meralco/San Miguel tussle, the systematic undermining of her authority—were all building toward a moment when staying would mean more damage than leaving.</p><div><strong>The Letter That Changed Everything</strong></div><p>Industry insiders describe the resignation as the end of the most consequential regulatory leadership the ERC had seen in decades. Under her watch, the commission approved a P28.29-billion transmission rate hike for the National Grid Corp., launched a digital Power Supply Procurement Toolkit, and nearly doubled power project approvals in a single quarter.</p><p>Her signature achievement was democratizing access to information—livestreaming commission meetings, pushing for immediate publication of deliberations, and launching energy literacy programs that treated consumers as intelligent participants rather than passive recipients.</p><p>The transparency push wasn’t just philosophical window dressing. Her drive for faster permitting cleared over 6,000 megawatts between March and June 2024 alone. But transparency, as Dimalanta learned, makes you enemies in an industry where regulatory capture has been the modus operandi for decades.</p><div><strong>The Origin Story</strong></div><p>When trying to understand a public figure, one goes back to the origin story. Dimalanta is the eldest of six children. Her father was an OFW—a lineman in the Middle East who sold tocino on the side to make ends meet—and a stay-at-home mom who also took on side hustles. She never planned to become an energy lawyer, or a lawyer at all.</p><p>“The story of how I got into law school is funny,” she laughed. “Two of my friends were taking the law aptitude exam. They said, ‘Sama ka na, because after that, we can immediately leave for our out-of-town trip.’” Long story short, she got in, decided to do one semester because she simply didn’t have tuition money, but ended up becoming a lawyer anyway.</p><p>The real plot twist came in 2001 when she joined Puyat, Jacinto, and Santos Law. “They told me, ‘Aralin mo ang batas na ito kasi ikaw lang ang walang assignment.’ That law was EPIRA,” she recalled. “Much to my surprise, I didn’t realize that joining a law firm would give me a front-row seat to nation-building.”</p><div><strong>The Suspension That Revealed Everything</strong></div><p>That front-row seat was not always comfortable, as it also gave her personal experiences with systemic dysfunction, perhaps the most potent example of which was her six-month suspension from office. The Nasecore complaint that led to the suspension reads like a textbook case of how broken the system really is. Here’s the twist that would make Kafka weep: Dimalanta was accused of favoring Meralco when her actual position was the exact opposite.</p><p>“My position in the case is the same as the position of Nasecore—that there should be a proper opening of the books audit before a reset,” she said. “I was advocating for what they were asking for.”</p><p>The absurdity deepened when I learned that the complainant had been filing cases for decades but this time chose to target only the chairwoman—not the entire collegial body. Even the Ombudsman hearing officer seemed perplexed by the selective targeting.</p><p>Only two months later, the Ombudsman lifted the suspension. The Management Association of the Philippines, the Makati Business Club, and the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industries all issued statements of their full confidence in her leadership.</p><div><strong>The Battles She Chose to Fight</strong></div><p>But Dimalanta says the most consequential confrontations she experienced weren’t with traditional energy players but with the embedded culture of gatekeeping in the system itself.</p><p>“Sometimes it’s incompetence, sometimes it’s being fed by the system,” she told me. “Sometimes they are so brazen.”</p><p>The systemic corruption wasn’t just financial—it was informational, procedural, cultural. Her strategic approach involved pinpointing areas of greatest damage and carving them out systematically: ensuring commissioners attended hearings, instituting transparency protocols, and making sure the public could observe how decisions were made.</p><p>Dimalanta’s regulatory philosophy centered on surgical precision in choosing battles. She admitted she had wished, out of frustration, that she could wield the regulatory bludgeon—abolish ERC and start fresh—but instead chose the scalpel: strategic, targeted interventions designed to maximize impact while minimizing collateral damage. All while ensuring transparency shines a light on every action in the agency.</p><p>“Corruption thrives in the dark,” she told me, summarizing the philosophy that guided her tenure.</p><div><strong>Energy Literacy: The Lasting Mission</strong></div><p>What strikes me most about Dimalanta is how her setbacks crystallized rather than diminished her sense of purpose. The suspension, the resignation, the system’s resistance—all of it reinforced her conviction that lasting change must come from an educated citizenry.</p><p>“If people can understand, even if it’s just a portion of consumers who become energy literate, people will start questioning,” she told me. “That’s where lasting change will really come from. Not from the top.”</p><p>This isn’t idealistic rhetoric from someone disconnected from ground reality. This is someone who spent evenings meeting with consumer groups, asking people how much they pay for electricity monthly, explaining peak versus off-peak pricing, and demystifying an industry that has thrived on consumer ignorance.</p><p>Her post-ERC plans center on expanding this energy literacy mission through consumer group engagement and programs that treat energy education as a form of economic empowerment.</p><div><strong>The Hope That Requires Action</strong></div><p>When I asked why she maintains hope despite witnessing the system’s dysfunction firsthand, Dimalanta’s response revealed the philosophical framework that sustained her through the regulatory wars.</p><p>“What’s the alternative?” she asked. “You leave in despair? I refuse to live my life that way. The only option is hope. But if you choose hope actively, then you have the courage and motivation to still act despite the environment.”</p><p>This active hope—kinetic rather than potential energy, as she put it—explains how she maintained effectiveness even while under siege. She also admitted that she should have reached out more to the big industry players from the very start, instead of resisting their requests for dialogue, for fear that these would raise questions about her impartiality and integrity. “They thought I was out to get them,” she said. “That is not me. I was planning to reach out more in the second half of this year.”</p><p>Whether the ERC can sustain the reforms she initiated remains an open question. The reluctant warrior may have laid down her regulatory sword, but her war for energy democracy continues. </p><p>-----</p><div><em>Boardroom Tea comes out every Wednesday.</em></div>

<p>Industry insiders describe the resignation as the end of the most consequential regulatory leadership the ERC had seen in decades.</p>

Industry insiders describe the resignation as the end of the most consequential regulatory leadership the ERC had seen in decades.

Boardroom Tea: The Reluctant Warrior’s Exit

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Boardroom Tea: The Reluctant Warrior’s Exit

Salve Ibaňez

Published Aug 20, 2025 10:00 PM PHT

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