Why Baguio and Benguet people resent NEA’s High-handedness
Pre-Semester Frontier Post 47
There’s an underlying reason why the brazen attempt of NEA to takeover BENECO is generating so much public outrage, helping galvanize opposition to what many see as a naked power grab—no pun intended. For many residents, who are coincidentally member-consumer-operators (MCO’s) too, the experience is channeling deep-seated grievance about the often-trivialized issue of self-determination.
Simply put, Baguio and Benguet are sick and tired of the imperial tyranny of Manila always telling them what to do, deciding what’s good for them, running their community life from swivel chairs in board rooms 250 kilometers away.
Manila even dictates who their congress representative should be.
This subjugation is both historical and systemic. Right at the turn of the century when Baguio was still aforming as a Townsite, the national government immediately lopped off huge swaths of land in the fledgling city, declaring them off-limits as government reservations.
Teachers Camp, Cabinet Hill, Forbes Park, PMA Reservation, Camp Allen Reservation, Supreme Court Compound, Court of Appeals Compound, DPS Compound, Engineers Hill, Loakan Reservation, Mansion House-Wright Park Reservation, Santo Tomas Reservation, Dairy Farm Reservation—if you put all these blocks of real estate together they aggregate about 43% of the city’s tiniest area of only about 58 square kilometers—all local tax-exempt.
That’s just a shade under one-half of the total real estate in Baguio that the City Government cannot collect realty taxes from. How do you manage a city with a built-in permanent 50% annual budget deficit?
That’s like trying to drive a car having a four-cylinder engine with only two pistons firing. This is why under a 1925 law, the national government is supposed to pay for half of the annual city budget, or P700,000 a year, whichever is higher. I honestly don’t know if this law is still being followed today.
But the money issue is not the annoying part. Everytime Baguio wants to do a major undertaking, Manila’s approval is usually required. The reverse is even worse; when Manila has determined it wants to do anything here, local opposition is totally vanquished, as a matter of course. “This has been approved in Manila” is the perfunctory and dismissive phrase that is euphemism for “just shut up and comply.”
For example, when the US Bases were returned to the Philippine government in 1991, one of the best conversion proposals I heard was turning Camp John Hay into a giant University Town, like Harvard in Cambridge, Massachussets. Why not? It would pay homage to Baguio’s being the educational center of the North. Camp John Hay would have made a wonderful world-class university campus, even beating UP Diliman.
But instead, the proposal that prevailed—because that’s what the Bases Conversion Development Authority (BCDA) think-tanks in Manila endorsed—is what we have today: exclusive-to-members-only golf club at rates so unaffordable only Chinese taipans and profligate South Korean businessmen could avail of them. And they did in such monopolistic numbers it’s been suggested in half-jest to rename Camp John Hay to “Kim Jong Hoi.”
I would laugh if only it didn’t hurt so.
Right after the July 16, 1990 earthquake, the City Government enforced a policy limiting building height for new constructions to six floors. That policy wilted under Manila’s overruling. Since tall condominium projects are approved by a national, not local, agency, there’s nothing Baguio residents could do except cover their ears so as not to hear the sickening sound of chainsaws mowing down thousands of pine trees to give rise to “green-compliant” condos shooting up 12 floors—twice the ignored local policy limit.
Through all of this, residents just bit their lips, their helplessness and resentment simmering inside of them. What can they do? Beyond motherhood protest sentiments sporadically articulated by half-sympathetic media, they have little choice but to take the slap on one cheek and turn the other cheek.
Now come the gods of NEA on their high chariots telling everybody at BENECO they’re going to start calling the shots now—on Manila’s orders, of course. So, go tell your mayor to toe the line.
Oh no, you don’t.
MCO’s awoke like the proverbial docile carabao bullwhipped once too much. You may think you own the entire city, but you’re not taking away their electric cooperative—because this time you’re taking away something they really, literally own. It’s no longer just a figure of speech this time now. The hurt is no longer abstract.
If we go by history, it has always been “what Manila wants, Manila gets.” Eventually. But, as they say, there’s a first time for everything, and it’s a lesson NEA seems intent on learning the hard way.
The author is a writer and lawyer based in Baguio City, Philippines. Former editor of the Gold Ore and Baguio City Digest, professor of journalism, political science and law at Baguio Colleges Foundation (BCF). He is a photographer and video documentarist. He has a YouTube channel called “Parables and Reason”