When a sitting Regional Trial Court judge takes to social media to scold her fellow Boholanos for “crying on Facebook instead of filing formal complaints,” you know the frustration over soaring fuel prices has reached a boiling point.
Judge Jennifer Marcos of the Bohol RTC did not mince words in a blunt post that ricocheted in social media feeds this week, urging residents to stop venting online and start holding institutions accountable.
“Ayaw sigeg yawyaw sa Facebook,” she wrote — roughly, stop just posting about it. “Write to the Price Coordinating Council through the Governor or the Mayor and report it. Copy furnish the Department of Energy.”
Her exasperation speaks to a wider civic fatigue in Bohol, where consumers caught between escalating pump prices and flat wages are watching regulators move too slowly — or not at all.
GOVERNOR ACTS, A TASK FORCE FORMED
Bohol Governor Aris Aumentado has responded to the mounting pressure with an executive order creating a Provincial Inter-Agency Task Force on Economic and Energy Resilience — a body tasked with recommending price stabilization measures and strengthening the monitoring work of the Provincial Price Coordinating Council.
His office has sought to project calm, assuring the public that Bohol remains stable in fuel supply and basic commodities, with reserves sufficient to last 90 days. Authorities are urging residents not to panic-buy or hoard.
At the national level, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) has ramped up monitoring of basic commodities — tracking price movements on canned goods, noodles, soap, batteries, and flour — warning traders to adhere to Suggested Retail Prices or face penalties.
Businesses caught hoarding to engineer artificial shortages risk fines of between P5,000 and one million pesos, depending on the severity of the violation.
“Any price increase must be aligned with a valid basis for hiking prices,” the DTI said, as conflict in the Middle East continues to roil global oil markets and ripple through transportation and supply chains.
THE ANATOMY OF A PRICE SURGE — AND WHY ONE ANALYST SAYS IT DOESN’T ADD UP
But it is a radio commentary by Bohol Tribune columnist Donald Sevilla, delivered on the March 9 edition of the program Newsmakers ug Uban Pa over DYTR radio station, that has sharpened the debate with uncomfortable precision.
Sevilla’s central argument: the fuel industry has no legitimate justification for the price hikes — at least not yet.
His reasoning is rooted in supply chain mechanics.
The Philippines, he explained, carries a national fuel inventory of roughly 50 days at any given time. Refiners — of which there is effectively only one in the country,
Petron Corporation in a joint venture with Malaysia’s Petronas — maintain additional buffer stocks to account for the approximately one-month shipping time from the Middle East.
Local depots like Bohol’s source their stocks from this domestic refining network.
The implication is stark: the fuel being sold at today’s elevated prices was almost certainly purchased — and priced — well before the current Middle East escalation began.
“Fuel industry players are having a windfall,” Sevilla said, selling stocks acquired at pre-crisis prices while passing on crisis-level costs to consumers. The arrangement, he argued, amounts to speculative pricing — imposing future-stock prices on existing inventory that was bought cheaply.
ONLY 20 PERCENT PASSES THROUGH HORMUZ
Sevilla also challenged the geographic premise of the panic.
The Strait of Hormuz — epicenter of current tensions — handles only about 20 percent of global fuel trade, he noted, leaving a wide array of alternative supply routes and sources available to buyers. The Philippines is not without options.
Finished fuel products, he explained, are traded on a Singapore-based platform in a manner similar to stock exchanges, where price psychology and speculative movement can amplify real-world disruptions far beyond their actual supply impact.
“Someone,” Sevilla said pointedly, “is profiting from the war in the Middle East.”
THE REGULATOR PROBLEM
What makes Sevilla’s critique more than an opinion column is the structural conflict of interest he flagged: some government officials charged with monitoring fuel prices, he noted, also own petrol stations.
The fox, in other words, may be watching the henhouse.
He also challenged the posture that both consumers and regulators seem to have adopted — that of supplicants, begging fuel companies not to raise prices too sharply, or asking them to stagger increases.
That framing, he argued, has already ceded moral and economic ground to the industry.
“It is the task of regulators to ensure fair pricing and protect the public’s interest,” Sevilla said, “but it seems people’s minds are being conditioned to accept the new pricing when the stocks sold are priced at the old rates.”
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has asked Congress for emergency powers to temporarily suspend excise and value-added taxes on fuel, with intervention expected once prices breach 80 US dollars per barrel.
WHAT ORDINARY BOHOLANOS CAN DO NOW
Judge Marcos, for her part, offered a practical roadmap for residents unwilling to wait for government action to catch up with their grocery bills.
Boholanos can report abusive gas stations through the eGovapp — a national government mobile application — by uploading photographs of posted pump prices along with the station’s name and location.
Formal written complaints can also be filed with the Price Coordinating Council through the provincial governor or the city or municipal mayor, with a copy to the DOE.
“The local government can actually initiate the investigation and file complaints, impose fines and sanctions, and coordinate with the DOE,” she said. “Have mercy on the ordinary workers.”
Bohol’s Bantay Presyo price-watch group, once active in flagging such violations, has gone dormant — a casualty, the judge suggested, of government inaction that wore down civil society’s enthusiasm.
The lesson she drew from its decline was not resignation but urgency: without the public pushing back, the powerful will simply price the powerless into silence.
PHOTO FROM: CHAT GPT