White Elephants of the Philippines

The term ‘White Elephant‘ is derived from Thailand, where an Albino (white) elephant was given to unfavored people by the ruler. Because these elephants were sacred and not permitted to work, it was a burden to the owner as it would eat up all the owner’s money until he/she became destitute. (source Investopedia)

Watching this weeks topic “Mahal Ka, Pero Walang Kwenta” on ABS-CBN’s The Correspondents (and partly by GMA’s Reporter’s Notebook), it talks about the White Elephants of the Philippines, it shows the very expensive but completely worthless projects done by our Government since the Marcos regime.

• Bataan Nuclear Power Plant by Former President Ferdinand Marcos Administration
• NAIA Terminal 3 by Former President Fidel Ramos Administration
• Hoval Medical Waste Incineration by Former President Fidel Ramos Administration
• Centennial Expo Filipino by Former President Fidel Ramos Administration
• Telephone sa Barangay Project by Former President Ejercito Estrada Administration
• COMELEC Automated Counting Machine by President Gloria Arroyo Administration

Did you know we already wasted P34 billion pesos on all these projects? These money are all taken from our taxes over the years and a portion of it could have been corrupted by the officials connected with these projects.

Now there is this National Broadband Deal and Cyber-Education Project, do you think these billions-of-pesos projects will be another White Elephant and will we allow these corrupt politicians to waste our hard earned money again?

We now have P3,000,000,000.00 of total loans from all the countries we are indebted to, yes that’s 3 trillion, which leads to the saying “Hindi ka pa pinapanganak, may utang ka na”.

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Alfredo is a web designer, programmer and a search engine marketer from the Philippines. He is also an amateur photographer and loves to travel. He can be found on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. Questions? Send him an email.