What gives?

BENCHWARMER
Ramon S. Dacawi

BAGUIO CITY -- There seems to be a pattern for officials of national government agencies to allocate sizable portions of Baguio’s land area in favor of big commercial development and big private land claims.

Over the years since Baguio’s founding a hundred years ago as the country’s temperate Summer Capital, its one and only City of Pines and Flower Garden City, much of the city’s open and forested spaces were preserved. This was so because about one-third of the city is owned by the national government which, until recently, was not predisposed to disposing its properties for private use.

That sound policy of preserving this one-of-a-kind, God-given jewel and gift to us all is shifting. It’s being turned upside down by the stewards and administrators of the legal titles of these lots we always thought and believed were for public use and enjoyment.

Until recently, we presumed everyone whoever stepped into this region of pines to live, to raise a family, to earn a degree, to grow up in, to woo, to honeymoon, to mend a heart to see the sights, to row a boat at the Burnham Lake, take a photo at Mines View Park, pray at the Lourdes Grotto, watch the PMA cadets in their week-end parades, stroll up and down Session Rd., ride a horse to the countryside, order a hotcake beside the Hangar Market, sip a cup at Dainty’s or Luisa’s Cafe, watch the flowers bloom or whatever, is co-owner of the place.

No longer. Even those who come home to bury a relative feel like their memories of growing up in what was once a single neighborhood are also being put to eternal rest by the continuing urban sprawl of concrete. We hear them and visitors blaming us for what happened and is happening to the Baguio they knew and presumed we’d never allow to be mangled after they left to find material progress, not only for themselves but for the families they had left behind.

As it is, we’re no longer stakeholders, to use that jargon of development. Baguio , with the blessings of those mandated to preserve or allocate, will soon belong to those who can afford to hold the steak. The stakes of exclusivity are being laid out over what were once forest, military and whatever government reservations our American colonial fathers laid out at the turn of the last cent0ury to preserve the lure of the place they found.

What recently happened, the award by the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples of lots within a forest reservation and areas overlapped by another application, has pitted one native Ibaloi clan with another. It has pitted the city against those who stand to benefit from the judgment. The family aggrieved by this bold and seemingly unprecedented decision is at a loss why it was never consulted during the process of adjudication. As property steward, the city itself wonders why its own side of the issue was never considered.

Time was when the policy was to give priority to city needs and ancestral land claims without conflicts, above private applications over public land. That was when the process was under the jurisdiction of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

As such, the city and its barangays pin-pointed available public lots for public use as parks, barangay halls, day-care centers and other community service purposes. Contrary to its policy, the DENR eventually awarded to a private applicant a public lot applied for public use by a barangay within the choice Forbes Park .

Before we know it, bigger portions of the so-called public domain will go the same way. It seems to be the trend for Baguio ’s development towards irretrievable loss of the beauty I guess even those in a position to tilt policy had seen and admired, even wished to have preserved for their own children to later appreciate.

All the while, I thought the Government Service Insurance System leadership saw the value of keeping Baguio the national heritage that it is (or was?). It did see things that way when it bought, for over P40 million, Juan Luna’s painting “Parisan Life” in an auction in Hongkong.

The leadership brushed aside criticisms, saying it does not only insure government workers and property. It also insures national heritage, in this case the Luna painting.

That argument of reason equally applies to Baguio . No Filipino whoever came up and saw can fully deny this city is also national heritage, even up to this point of its distress against the onslaught of business and commercial infrastructure.

I guess that belief no longer holds. GSIS wants to have that tiny pine patch beside the Baguio Convention Center turned into a four-building high-rise condotel-commercial complex in a joint venture with Shoemart, the giant mall chain which has taken on “My City, My SM as it slogan.

What gives for this shift of policy and of values? (e-mail:rdacawi@yahoo.com for comments).