The company has pending applications to explore elsewhere in the Philippines. Placer Dome's chair and chief executive officer, John Wilson, met with Philippine President Fidel V. Ramos in September to apologize for the mining disaster. Ramos reportedly assured the company that it was still welcome in the country. In the meantime, a hold order that had prevented Marcopper's two expatriates from leaving the country has been lifted. Reid was reassigned to company headquarters in Vancouver, while Loney is still in Manila to supervise the rehabilitation work in Marinduque.
Company lawyers continue to seek dismissal of the criminal charges in Philippine courts.
Patrick Bond, an economist with the National Institute for Economic Policy and a contributing writer to Multinational Monitor , Darlene Miller of the Institute for African Alternatives and Langa Zita of the South African Communist Party challenged the constitutional provision as inconsistent with constitutional principles agreed upon in 1993. Their challenge was endorsed by two dozen prominent individuals, as well as environmental groups, trade unions and other civic groups including the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa, several branches of Earthlife Africa and the Environmental Justice Networking Forum, the International Labor Rights Information Group and Workers Organization for Socialist Action. As the white Nationalist Party negotiated a transition from apartheid to democracy with Nelson Mandela's African National Congress in the early 1990s, it insisted that the final constitution be consistent with a set of 34 constitutional principles. After the South African Constitutional Assembly adopted a final constitution in May 1996, individuals and organizations were given approximately two months to challenge elements of the final constitution as inconsistent with those constitutional principles. The Constitutional Court ultimately heard approximately three dozen challenges to the constitution.