Dr. Ronald U Mendoza presents Bataan Nuclear Power Plant study in Ramon C. Reyes Memorial Lectures

Last January 30, 2019, the Philosophy Department held its annual Ramon C. Reyes Memorial Lecture in honor of the late Professor Ramon Reyes of the Philosophy Department.
 
The Ramon Reyes Memorial Lectures are envisioned to be a way for philosophical and academic discourse to contribute to the enlivening of a critical public life. For this year’s event, the theme for the Reyes Lecture was: "Remembering in a Time of Forgetting."

Held in the Ateneo Professional Schools Auditorium in Ateneo Rockwell Campus, the lecture was delivered by three speakers: Dr Leovino M. Garcia of the Philosophy Department, Mr. John Nery of the Inquirer, and Dean Ron Mendoza of the Ateneo School of Government.

Dr Mendoza presented the Ateneo Policy Center’s recently published case study of the Bataan Nuclear Powerplant. The abstract for that study is indicated below and the full study can be accessed here (http://philippinestudies.net/ojs/index.php/ps/article/view/4765).

“Drawing from recent literature on white elephant projects, this article examines the case of the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP)—the paradigmatic example of a white elephant project in the Philippines.
The BNPP megaproject has massive implications for the country’s fiscal standing and long-term economic prospects, offering lessons for future projects of this size and significance. By revisiting the BNPP’s problematic history as well as the continuing infrastructure governance challenges in the post-Marcos period, this study outlines the repercussions of such dynamics for the Philippine government’s “Build, Build, Build” infrastructure program, the most ambitious since the Marcos era.”+AMDG