The power of kids

THE ISSUE had long been settled, and Baguio can now sleep soundly, know ing part of its pine heritage has been saved and will be protected as such by anyone who loves this city.

Or so we thought, until last week. That was when the local papers carried city mayor Mauricio Domogan’s frustration over the upscaling of the purchase price by the Government Service Insurance System.

The tree park, together with the site of the Baguio Convention Center, used to be part Original Certificate of Title No.1 in the name of the City of Baguio.

The tree park and the Center’s lot were sliced off from OCT 1 by the stroke of the pen of then President Ferdinand Marcos who assigned it to GSIS so GSIS would build the Center as site of the World Chess Championship series between Anatoly Karpov and challenger Viktor Korchnoi.

This meant the GSIS never paid a single centavo as it acquired the two adjoining lots by by Marcos’ stroke of the pen. .

On the other hand, the city government wants to pay GSIS for the Center and its lot and offered, at the same time, to also buy the forested lot and preserve it for Baguio’s posterity.

At first, the GSIS agreed and even entered into an agreement that the payment will come from the share of the city from the rentals to be paid by the developer of Camp John Hay.

The agreement never materialized, despite the national government’s recognition that it does not pay the city single real estate tax for its properties and landholdings here.

In 2012, Shoemart,which obtained the old Pines Hotel, offered to buy the pine lot and turn it into a four high-rise condotels called “Baguio Air Residences” and link it to its main building.

Responding to public outcry over the planned destruction of the pine forest, the city government offered to buy it, together the Baguio Convention Center.

Also in response, school children of the Baguio Pines Family Learning Center led by principal Leonila Bayla, asksing then President Gloria Arroyo to convince GSIS to save the tree stand for Baguio.

Recently, Mayor Mauricio Domogan and other city officials agreed to have the city purchase the two lots. To their dismay, however, GSIS upped its price for the two areas with a total of 33,600 square meters from P433, 517, 400 to 682,201,800.

The price escalation prompted the children of the same school to write personal letters asking President Rodrigo Duterte to intercede so the city could get back the lots GSIS never paid a single centavo for.

Nineteen kids from the school trooped to the mayor’s office and submitted to Domogan their personal letters pleading to President Duterte to save the two lots for Baguio.

The stand-off recalls GSIS’ having bought “A Parisian Life”, a painting by Juan Luna for millions of pesos, justifying that the system does not only ensure lives but it also ensures national heritage.

So are the trees beside the Convention Center considered as national heritage and should be preserved, Baguio residents are saying.

“Peope from down here who build their vacation houses in Baguio blame us residents for destroying pine forests,” a resident observed. “It is high-time for them and residents to ask President Duterte to preserve remaining forests even as their subdivisions destroyed Baguio’s ambience as the City of Pines.

E-mail: mondaxbench@yahoo.com for comments.