Faith-based public vigilance emerges in Baguio

(Filed with PDI 31 March but unpublished as of 1 April 2009)


Faith-based public vigilance emerges in Baguio
By Maurice Malanes

BAGUIO CITY, 31 March – A new form of public vigilance based not on ideology but on faith has emerged in Baguio.

This has been dramatized by a well-attended March 30 religious-led multi-sectoral “awareness rally” against the reported opening of a casino at Camp John Hay. And not only the Roman Catholics, mainline Protestants, evangelicals and Pentecostals, but also Muslims participated.

Instead of the usual red flags and banners of militant activists, the estimated 2,000 or more anti-casino rally participants held streamers, placards and banners bearing biblical passages and statements pointing how gambling could corrupt society’s sense of right and wrong, break up families, and could add to the city’s rising crimes.

Marching for almost a kilometer from the Baguio Convention Center down Session Road, the rally participants led by bishops, priests, pastors and an imam converged at the City Hall grounds where they held a 20-minute ecumenical worship service.

Selected representatives of the Baguio Multi-Sectoral Group and the Baguio-Benguet Ecumenical Group later made an audience with members of the City Council who were having their regular session.

The council accommodated the religious leaders, who also officially handed over a resolution opposing the opening of a casino in Baguio, which was signed by 15,000 signatories in just a week.

Their resolution pointed that the Bases Conversion Development Authority and the Camp John Hay Development Corporation “surreptitiously signed” a “Casino Cooperation Agreement” on July 1, 2008 for the establishment of a casino at Camp John Hay without informing the Baguio public.

Their resolution also said that the establishment of a casino at the former American resort violates the second item of 19 conditions, which the city council in 1994 required before approving the Environmental Compliance Certificate of the Camp John Hay developer, Fil-Estate.

The second condition contained in City Resolution No. 362, series of 1994, states that “the BCDA shall ensure only wholesome, family-oriented entertainment and recreational activities are conducted within the (John Hay Economic) Zone” and that “no casino operations shall definitely be allowed under any guise or form.”

Participation in governance

At the council’s session hall, the religious representatives accompanied by lawyer and church lay leader Alex Bangsoy actually engaged the city council and in a way participated in policy-making and governance as they took turns in arguing why Baguio, being an educational center and a city with a youth-dominated population, couldn’t be transformed into a gambling capital.

Vice-mayor Daniel Fariñas assured the religious leaders that the city council wouldn’t allow casino or gambling in any guise or form. To this, Roman Catholic Bishop Carlito Cenzon of the Diocese of Baguio said he had so much confidence in the city council that it wouldn’t fail its constituents.

But Cenzon asked whether the 19 conditions, which the city council required in 1994 for the development of John Hay, were weakened as was reported.

Earlier, Bangsoy cited a Philippine Daily Inquirer report, which quoted Mayor Reinaldo Bautista as saying a 2003 Supreme Court ruling on Camp John Hay had weakened the 19 conditions set by the Baguio government as prerequisites for its development, including a prohibition against a casino inside the tourism complex.

This statement plus the council’s “changing positions” on casino and other gaming forms are, according to Bangsoy, “very disturbing.” He again cited the same Inquirer report (March 8), which quoted BCDA president Narciso Abaya as saying “the city’s position on the casino kept changing.”
Besides the 19 conditions for the operation of the Camp John Hay Special Economic Zone, the city council has banned all forms of gambling in Baguio, including a casino, since 1989.

The council has affirmed this ban in a resolution approved in 2002, and another measure passed on Feb. 2 this year.

But Abaya noted the city council also passed a resolution in 2003 that approved the request of the Camp John Hay-Poro Point Development Corp. (JPDC), the office that previously managed the CJHSEZ, to operate a gambling and entertainment complex there. The JPDC has been replaced by the John Hay Management Corp., a subsidiary of BCDA.

The only condition the council imposed in that resolution was that only tourists and Camp John Hay club members can enter and participate in gambling activities. The council again overturned this 2003 resolution with another resolution in 2008.

In the council’s recent dialogue with the religious leaders, councilor Pinky Rondez was already pushing for the outright repeal of the 2003 City Council Resolution 248, which practically approved a casino at Camp John Hay.

Bautista had said no casino would rise inside Camp John Hay “while I am the mayor.”

Still, leaders of the Baguio multi-sectoral group – the same group that catapulted a cash-strapped Braulio Yaranon to the mayoralty seat in 2004 on an anti-gambling and anti-corruption platform -- made a strong message to City Hall last March 30 – that they are closely watching their elected officials every step of the way.