BAGUIO CITY – The Baguio Multi-sectorial Group (BMG), an organization of various religious denominations in the city, warned of the conduct of mass actions by the people in the coming weeks to show their protest and disgust over the latest action of the city council to railroad the approval of an inserted resolution interposing no objection to the operation of an electronic bingo gaming station along Marcos highway.
Aside from gathering tens of thousands of signatures of local residents which will be submitted to the Office of the President and the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation (PAGCOR) to show the authorities Baguio people dislike gambling, Bishop Calito J. Cenzon said the BMG will organize the conduct of a series of mass actions around the city to express their sentiments on the sudden move of the council to deviate from the city government’s anti-gambling policy.
“It is unfortunate that majority of the councillors had a sudden change of heart that resulted to the sudden change of the city government’s anti-gambling policy. We do not know why such change of heart among our city officials occurred that now opens the floodgates for the city to become a gambling haven,” Bishop Cenzon stressed.
For over three decades now, the city council had been passing numerous resolutions expressing the city’s opposition to the proliferation of all forms of gambling in order to sustain the morals and values of the people considering that gambling is a social menace that will greatly affect the behaviour of the people and their family and community relations.
Cenzon said the BMG does not want Baguio to be converted to a ‘sin city’ by virtue of the recent action of the council to allow the free entry of gambling activities in the city, thus, its members will initiate appropriate interventions within their congregations to remind the people of the evils that gambling brings to the community and its serious negative effects to the behaviour of the persons engulfed to such vice.
The Bishop branded the latest action of the council as immoral and not within the ambit of logical and conscientious public servants who simply want to protect their personal and political gains over and above the welfare of the greater majority of their constituents, thus, they opted to deviate from the city government’s anti-gambling policy.
He expressed disappointment over what he observed that the majority members of the city council seem not to prioritize conscientious decision-making but instead base their actions on their material gains thereby compromising the welfare of the people they are supposed to render service.
Cenzon appealed to local residents to support the conduct of mass actions against the recent council action to allow the operation of electronic bingo to show to the elected officials their disgust, dismay, dissatisfaction on the brand of service they are providing the people to force them to reconsider their position and junk the resolution for the sake of a gambling-free city.
He said that the fight will now be the voice of the people against the voice of the majority members of the city council who preferred to break the tradition of having broke the city government’s policy against the proliferation of all forms of gambling in the city amidst the stiff opposition on gambling by concerned sectors. By Dexter A. See
