The House of Representatives will meet on Wednesday. The timing is very unusual as House meetings, almost without exception, are held on Fridays. But it's a special day to push through what we are told is a very special piece of legislation. Details are scarce at this time and members of the National Assembly have not even received their papers but 7NEWS is reliably informed that government will move decisively to take charge of BTL.
As we understand it, legislation will be introduced which will give the PUC greater powers as a utility regulator. The PUC Act will be beefed up to give the utilities commission powers to issue administrative and corporate directives to a utility. Presently, under normal circumstances, the PUC can only give operational directives. But now, with BTL's Board of Directors stuck in a deadlock and without any certainty of just who is the Chairman foreseeably the PUC would be empowered to intervene as regulator and assign a Chairman.
Again, this is the information gleaned from a number of highly placed sources but at this time it cannot be confirmed, not even by members of the National Assembly because, as we noted, House papers with this pieces of legislation have not been circulated. Still, if it goes down as we are told it will all bets are that the move is planned to accommodate Michael Ashcroft and his various interests whose pending purchase of 37% of the company's shareholdings is being stalled by, among other things, a standing deadlock in the Board of Directors with Prosser on one side, and Government and Ashcroft on the other.
