HAPPY WEEKEND

P33-M Cordillera fund/ MP special elections
GINA P. DIZON

BAGUIO CITY -- Again, this topic is seemingly boring. Yet we dwell with it for quite some time again with Cordillera Month being celebrated this July. National Economic Development Authority regional and Regional Development Council chairman Juan Ngalob said ‘We need to motivate others” in the move for Cordillera autonomy. Joining him was former NCIP officer Fernando Bahatan Jr, in urging participants if the autonomy forum held last July 23 at the University of the Cordilleras to go for regional autonomy.

It had been nearly 20 years since the two plebiscites had been conducted which resulted to a NO vote on regional autonomy. Yet, after all those years, the response is still basically the same. Cordillerans are wary of approving autonomy for the Cordillera. Based on a recent survey sponsored by RDC which was published in this paper months back, 65% rejected autonomy because respondents here simply did not understand Organic Acts providing for regional autonomy. This was compounded with pessimistic positions that autonomy will not bring anything good in their lives and people are confused on different opinions on autonomy. Where lack of understanding and information is the problem, this brings us to ask what efforts are being done to address this gap to let Cordillerans know what autonomy is all about.

Ngalob said the national government forwarded P33 million for Cordillera matters which includes the conduct of information-related activities for 2007 and 2008. He said the amount of P5 million had already been spent for the survey, among other expenses. This brings us to a remaining amount of P28 million. Ngalob during the forum said RDC will go slow in implementing this amount. What plans does RDC intend to do? The forum did not elaborate much on this however. But Ngalob said advocacy on regional autonomy would reach the public. How will this be done?

Where lack of information is the problem, why don’t the RDC give the work to the Philippine Information Agency and other private information outlets do the information drive. With information which is readily available and information which needs to be dug, journalists as part of their daily work can easily do this job. Add to this youth and sectoral organizations who can naturally, as part of their activities do community based information activities. Lack of information has since been the problem. Where money is the problem, P28 million is available and much can be done with it. The Cordillera Studies Center has done already lots of research and field-based data on issues of Cordillera concerns, and so with other non-government agencies dwelling on Cordillera concerns.

So with the departments of Agrarian Reform, Natural Resources and National Commission on Indigenous Peoples. Otherwise if not, what had they been doing? It would be a matter of packaging available information and let the people know the relevance of these researches to regional autonomy. PIA and other information outlets and organizations to include student and youth groups have the capacity to do this work. Plays, skits and other innovative methods aside from roundtable discussions, fora, and forms in tri-media are effective ways of letting people be informed of what they are lost of.

In the same development, it was learned that autonomy-related researches are on the pipeline by RDC in collaboration with government offices including NCIP and some non-government organizations.

Are results of these researches dependent on advocacy and autonomy- information drives? That is, are there not already available information which can be packaged in order that the drive on autonomy push on while waiting for scholarly researches to be published? Otherwise, after ten years, with the way that we are moving, we will be back in 1990 when the first plebiscite was conducted.
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Six months had already passed since Mountain Province Rep. Victor Dominguez died, yet lawmaking bodies have not yet acted on a political decision to have special elections in the province. The seat is still being comfortably occupied by caretaker Kalinga Rep. Manuel Agyao. While others also sit back comfortably and wait for the next elections in May 2010 to come, others are not that comfortable sitting down. Mountain Province Gov. Maximo Dalog said the provincial government is willing to bankroll the holding of the special elections if the funds will not exceed P3 million. How true is this? The Commission on Elections has also not issued any go signal on the availability of funds for special elections in Mountain Province.

Understandably, funding for special elections should come from the National Government. Obviously, the reason is that lawmaking bodies are not forwarding any measure for the holding of special elections for Comelec to give a certification. For whatever reason that is, these law making bodies who hold elective positions are not paving the way for people to exercise their fundamental right in electing their own leader. As we know, self-serving motives and interests as what local newsman Gregory Taguiba said, governs the thinking of these elective officials. Amen to that.

Equally, people of Mountain Province are also cool about holding special elections. Raising a complaint seemingly is a non-practical issue which is better spent on working for a kilo of rice to be cooked for the next meal and on for the next meal. Yet, on the other hand, where to get the next meal is dependent on being concerned about who decides on how much a kilo of rice costs.

Anyway, House Speaker Prospero Nograles said no special elections have been set for Mountain Province, "unless all the members of the (recently combined) Lakas-Christian Muslim Democrats (CMD) and Kabalikat ng Malayang Pilipino (Kampi) leaders agree and file a bill for the activity.”

The Speaker was in Baguio City recently for the joint declaration of merger between the ruling Lakas-CMD and Kampi political parties represented by Baguio Rep. Mauricio Domogan and Rep. Agyao. What future awaits the peaceful people of Mountain Province who are at the waiting end for what their leaders will do for them?