n 1976, construction work began on what was to become the Philippine’s--if not Southeast Asia’s biggest and most expensive white elephant. The despot Ferdinand Marcos, ever on the lookout for ways to scam his countrymen found an easy way of killing two birds with one stone: pocket millions upon millions of dollars through kickbacks and under-the-table deals while seeming to address the country’s heavy dependence on imported oil.

Thus the scheme to build the Bataan Nuclear Plant was conceived together with a handful of Marcos’ trusted cronies, most notably Herminio Disini who arraigned the deal for millions of dollars in kickbacks from Westinghouse, the US firm that won the allegedly rigged bid.

Soon after that deal, Disini moved into a Castle in Vienna and has apparently avoided arrest or prosecution for his involvement in this or any of the many other questionable businesses schemes he hatched during the Martial Law years.

Fast forward to 2004. It is now almost 30 years later. The Bataan Nuclear plant has not produced a single watt of electricity…and the interest alone on the loan being paid by the each and every Filipino is currently estimated at $155,000.00 dollars a day. Even by US economic standards (the worlds largest and most powerful economy), that amount is significant. For a Third-World economy like the Philippines, it is crushing!

Just imagine the thousands upon thousands of schoolchildren that could have had their education paid for by that money. Imagine the thousands of sick Filipinos without healthcare that could have benefited from it. Imagine the miles and miles of well-paved roads that could have been built with it. Instead, each and every day the Philippines pays foreign banks $155,000.00 dollars…never to see those funds again.

Something has to be done! Parties responsible for this fiasco need to be brought to justice. If American business icons like Enron’s Kenneth Lay and Martha Stewart can be punished for acts that pale in comparison to the plunder that Marcos and his cabal of scalawags visited on the Philippines, why are those scalawags still running around scot-free?

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