My takeaway from your story is that the high connections your landlord probably had to draw upon was the reason you prevailed with the electricity company.
His point stands. Don't make it easy for them, this is wrong and they need to be made to understand that it's unacceptable for them to pull these kinds of stunts.
IMO he shouldn't have let it rest after the electricity was turned back on, he should have pressed the matter by trying to contact the media about this and by getting a written statement from the landlord regarding the events for future reference, and should have written a blog post about it.
