BAUKO, Mountain Province – The office of the Presidential Peace Adviser on Peace, Reconciliation and Unity (OPAPRU) will prioritize Mount Data as part of the national peace museum institute that is being envisioned by the government to help in educating the Filipinos on the country’s rich history on peace and reconciliation.
Speaking during the 37th anniversary of the Mount Data ‘sipat’ anniversary, Presidential Peace Adviser Carlito Galvez, Jr. said that Mount Data played a key role in the realization of lasting peace in the region for having been the site of the secession of armed hostilities between government forces and the Cordillera Peoples Liberation Army (CPLA) on September 13, 19886.
With the successful peace agreement that was stricken in the Bangsamoro region, the OPAPRU official claimed that the same can be replicated in similarly situated areas in the country to be able to allow people to actively participate in what is being readied as the national peace exhibition.
He pointed out that Mount Data has been included as part of the national peace exhibition being prepared by the agency to allow the youth to be educated on how law and order in the country was realized through the consolidated efforts of concerned stakeholders.
Further, Secretary Galvez stipulated that Mount Data is also being considered as one of the sites of the peace museum where the various peace memorabilia will be deposited to serve as learning materials for people involved in extortion and educational activities being done in various key destinations around the archipelago.
Earlier, former Bauko mayor Abraham B. Akilit had been advocating for the put up of a peace museum within the Mount Data hotel area to serve as a repository of the various peace memorabilia and to showcase how the historic peace agreement between the Philippine government and the Cordillera Bodong Administration (CBA) and CPLA was achieved.
The striking of the Mount Data peace agreement paved the way for the establishment of the Cordillera Administrative Region (CaR0 following the issuance of Executive order (EO) No. 220 of former President Corazon C. Aquino on July 15, 1987 that brought together the provinces of Abra, Benguet, mountain Province and Baguio city from Region I and Ifugao and Kalinga-Apayao from Region II.
The Cordillera Administrative Region 9caR) was purposely created to administer the affairs of the national government in the region, accelerate the socio-economic development of the region and more importantly, prepare the region for autonomy.
In the 19th Congress, all Cordillera congressmen filed House Bill (HB 3267 that seeks to establish the Cordillera Autonomous Region while Senator Robinhood Padilla filed Senate Bill (SB) 2275 that serves as the counterpart measure of the said house version.
Autonomy advocates underscored that the retaliation of self-rule by the Cordillera will help in speeding up the region’s growth and development because the autonomous regional government will be able to craft policies that are suitable to the present condition of the region with lesser restraint from outside forces.
