Bury Marcos at BNPP instead—Lagman

PHOTO BY Marc Jayson Cayabyab/INQUIRER.net

Why not bury the dictator at a monument to his own corrupt regime?

This was the statement of Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman, who scored the plan of President Rodrigo Duterte to revive the mothballed Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP).

In a press conference of the “Magnificent Seven” bloc of minority lawmakers in Congress, Lagman said Marcos should be buried at the site that depicted his own regime’s “corruption and folly.”

READ: Energy chief gets Duterte’s green light for $1-B nuke plant rehab 

“If you’re looking for an alternative site for the late dictator, it can be the nuclear power plant. That’s consistent with the folly and corruption of the late dictator,” Lagman said.

“That should be the final resting place for the despot,” he added.

Lagman made the statement amid the plans of the Duterte administration to resurrect the nuclear power plant, just after the Supreme Court ruled that there was no grave abuse of discretion on the part of the President in favoring a hero’s burial for Marcos as a former President and soldier at the Libingan ng mga Bayani.

READ: SC: ‘No grave abuse of discretion’ by Duterte on Marcos burial 

The 30-year-old BNPP started construction in 1975 and was completed in 1984 with an inflated cost of $2.3 billion, four times the initial bid of $600 million.

The 620-megawatt nuclear power plant in Morong, Bataan raised environmental concerns, supposedly because it was built close to a fault line, raising fears of a nuclear meltdown in case of an earthquake.

READ: Nuke plant rehab entails unbearable costs, green group warns

The Sandiganbayan recently ordered Herminio Disini, a Marcos crony, to return $50.6 million in ill-gotten kickbacks he received for helping two foreign firms obtain the contract to build the BNPP. But the anti-graft court did not find any evidence that Marcos received the commissions.

Disini was charged with having facilitated the award of the BNPP contract to two US firms, the Burns & Roe engineering company and Westinghouse Electric Co., which paid Disini $18 million in bribes. The pay-offs allegedly went to companies co-owned by Marcos and Disini.

READ: Sandiganbayan orders Marcos crony to return $50-M loot in nuclear plant deal 

For his part, Akbayan Rep. Tom Villarin slammed President Duterte for taking inspiration from the dictator in trying to revive the nuclear plant.

“The BNPP is a testament to the corruption of Marcos. Of the $27 billion that Marcos left as foreign aid, $2.3 billion of that came for the BNPP deal,” Villarin said.

Villarin hit Duterte for showing signs of being a fan of Marcos, from supporting a hero’s burial for the dictator, suspending the writ of habeas corpus and now resurrecting the mothballed power plant.

“When you talk about this BNPP again, it’s the proposal again that resurrects the Marcos legacy, in the same way that this administration has been resurrecting the horrors of the martial regime,” Villarin said. RAM/rga

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