Continued from last issue.

he Bataan Nuclear Power Plant, located 60 miles (97Km) north of Manila, took eight years to build at the cost of 2.3 billion dollars. When it was finally completed in 1984, it had cost three times as much as a comparable plant built in South Korea.

Shortly after borrowing the 2.3 Billion dollars needed to build the nuclear plant, Ferdinand Marcos and company fled the country in February 1986. That same year a team of international inspectors visited the Bataan power plant and declared it to be unsafe and inoperable. Not only was the plant built along several earthquake fault lines, it was also dangerously close to the then-dormant Mt. Pinatubo volcano.

Now let's go back in time. The year is 1927 and Alexander Sack, a Russian international law scholar working in Paris was formalizing what was to be known as "The Doctrine of Odious Debts." In it the pre-eminent professor noted that: "If a despotic power incurs a debt not for the needs or in the interest of the State, but to strengthen its despotic regime, to repress the population that fights against, or for purposes that "serve interests manifestly personal," this debt is odious for the population of the state. "This debt is not an obligation for the nation; it is a regime's debt, a 'personal' debt of the power that has incurred it, consequently it falls with the fall of this power."

Under the doctrine of Odious Debts--as further refined by international standards, three conditions must be present before a state can repudiate a debt: 1. The debt must have been incurred without the consent of the people of the state. 2. The debt can not have benefited the public in that state. And 3. The lender must have been aware of these two conditions.

According to Toronto-based Probe International, in an October 19, 1999 article authored by Patricia Adams, the conclusion they arrive at is: "Given that large payments allegedly went to Marcos and his cronies, that the Filipino people never benefited from the plant, and that the plant was unsafe, Probe International says the Philippine government should declare the outstanding Bataan plant debt odious and send it to international arbitration."

Might this be a way we can finally rid ourselves of some of the crushing debt that Marcos and his greedy band of thieves bestowed on us and our children? And will our elected officials have the courage and common sense to send this matter to International Courts for arbitration?

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References:
Probe International - Marcos' nuclear plant
Jubilee Iraq - Odious Debts

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