This story
was taken from Bulatlat, the Philippines's alternative weekly
newsmagazine (www.bulatlat.com, www.bulatlat.net, www.bulatlat.org).
Vol. V, No. 30, September 4-10, 2005
Baguio Urban Poor
Push for Charter Change
After the impeachment
complaint, the members of the House of Representatives are expected to
deliberate on the 2006 national budget and to start the so-called great debate
on changing the 1987 Constitution. It may interest legislators to know that the
urban poor in Baguio City are calling for charter change, but of a different
kind.
BY LYN V. RAMO BAGUIO CITY — The urban
poor in this city (246 kms from Manila) have taken to the streets to call for
charter change. But before pro-charter
change national government officials jump for joy, it must be stressed that the
Baguio urban poor are not referring to the 1987 Philippine Constitution but
their city’s charter which marked its 96th year last Sept. 1.
In a rally at the Kilometer
0 here, Geraldine Cacho, chair emeritus of the Organisasyon dagiti Nakurapay nga
Umili iti Syudad (Ornus, or Organization of the Urban Poor) said that Sept. 1,
1909 must be considered as the day when “imperialist encroachment into the
Cordillera people’s territory” happened. She said that the Americans
drafted the current Baguio Charter and sold Ibaloy (an indigenous people’s
group) lands to foreigners and moneyed families from the metropolitan cities.
Under the Baguio Charter,
public lands that are alienable and disposable may be expropriated through the
Townsite Sales Application (TSA) system which the Americans introduced.
According to Ornus, the TSA is anti-poor because it allows the sale of lands
only to the highest bidder. “Kasano a makatagikua ti
dagdaga dagiti nakurapay nga umili iti syudad no ti mismo a linteg ti mangkuna a
saan a mabalin?” (How could the poor acquire lands in the city when the law
says they could not?), Cacho asked. In the Charter Day program,
Baguio City Mayor Braulio Yaranon said that the city was intended for only
25,000 people. Almost 100 years later, Baguio’s population has grown to about
300,000. During a land congress of
Ornus last Aug. 31, representatives of the city’s urban poor pushed for an
amendment of the Baguio City Charter to scrap the TSA system. They also called
on the local government to award the lands in urban poor settlements to their
actual occupants and to stop the demolition of urban poor dwellings. The land congress discussed
the situation of land ownership in the districts occupied by informal settlers
from the provinces. These include three of the most populated districts, namely
Irisan’s Cypress Point, Lime Kiln, San Carlos and Idugan; District 12’s Kias,
Atok Trail, Fort del Pilar, Loakan, Liwanag and Apugan; and Fairview and Tacay
areas. Nordis / Bulatlat © 2004 Bulatlat
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Northern Dispatch
Posted by Bulatlat