More importantly, creditors should be held liable for profiteering from blatantly corrupt loans at the expense of the Filipino people. It is not believable that they were unaware that Marcos and his cronies were cashing in on the BNPP. As early as 1975, glaring disparities in the estimated cost of the BNPP had already surfaced. Despite Westinghouse’s winning bid growing more than 300%, the US Eximbank still awarded Marcos $644.4 million in direct and guaranteed loans in 1976.
There are past legal precedents for the cancellation of onerous debt. In 1898, the US repudiated the debts of Cuba to Spain. The British House of Commons International Development Committee also released a decision in 1998 calling the bulk of Rwanda’s external debt onerous and should not be shouldered by the people because they were used by that country’s genocidal regime.
In the spirit of holding creditors to account, the remaining balance of the BNPP debt should be canceled, including the securitized Brady Bonds component which should now be their responsibility. But beyond this, creditors should also reimburse past debt payments made by government, which could be in the form of reduction in current outstanding balances with them.
But debt cancellation should not focus exclusively on the BNPP. A Marcos Debt Review Task Force should be established to reexamine all of Marcos’s foreign debts to determine how much of the remaining balance and past payments are illegitimate debt, for the purpose of recommending their immediate and unconditional suspension. IBON Features / (Bulatlat.com)
August 2005
