TABUK CITY, Kalinga – Baguio City Mayor Benjamin B. Magalong assured autonomy advocates of the all-out support of the city’s officialdom to the renewed quest for regional autonomy to allow the region to move on to greater heights with a better pace of development.
Magalong, together with a 51-member delegation from Baguio City, attended the 32nd Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR) founding anniversary hosted by the Kalinga provincial government and co-hosted by the infrastructure committee of the Regional Development Council (RDC) in the Cordillera last July 15, 2019.
“As a Cordilleran by choice, I fully support the quest for autonomy primarily due to its expected positive effects in enhancing bottoms-up governance. Our diverse culture and heritage should serve as the unifying factor in our common struggle for self-rule. Let us use our commonalities in beefing up the snowballing autonomy movement for us to convince the members of the 18th Congress to pass the long-overdue organic act and for President Rodrigo Duterte to certify the autonomy bill as a priority administration measure. Everything is not actually lost in our cause,” Mayor Magalong stressed.
The local chief executive assured stakeholders that city officials will do their part in making people understand the true essence of autonomy, especially in charting the overall development thrust of the region, so that they will vote for the ratification of the third Organic Act once it is submitted to the Cordillerans for ratification that will guarantee the unity of the region in an autonomous status.
Magalong also acknowledged former Baguio City Mauricio G. Domogan, who chaired both the RDC and Regional peace and Order Council (RPOC), for having set the tone in the region’s vibrant quest for self-governance as he has no doubt done his valuable share in advancing the region’s clamor in the national level by being a staunch advocate of self-rule.
According to him, the Cordillera and Muslim Mindanao are the only regions in the country granted the authority to establish autonomous regions as enshrined in the pertinent provisions of the 1987 Constitution..
However, Cordillerans have twice rejected the autonomy laws that were crafted for such purposes for various reasons while our Muslim brothers and sisters have gone so far in the establishment of their autonomous region which is now known as the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
Magalong said that with the passion of our Cordillera lawmakers in pursuing the passage of an organic act for the Cordillera, coupled with the overwhelming support from the people, we will be able to have our own autonomous region the soonest.
CAR was re-established by virtue of Executive Order (EO) 220 that was signed by former President Corazon C. Aquino on July 15, 1987 that brought together the provinces of Abra, Benguet, Mountain Province and Baguio City from their former mother Region in the Ilocos Region and the provinces of Ifugao, Kalinga and Apayao from the Cagayan Valley Region, tasked to administer the affairs of government in the region, accelerate the socio-economic development of the region and prepare the region for autonomy.
By Dexter A. See
