By Atty. Antonio P. Pekas
Baguio City is suffering from urban decay. It was planned for a population of only 25, 000. Now there are more than 300,000 people in the city at any given time.
Every voter who is not crazy want a wholesome Baguio, even if we cannot bring back the good old Baguio with its pine scented air, wide open spaces with pine trees, and just enough people and vehicles on the streets. The number of business establishments were just enough. Crime was generally limited to petty ones. The few hospitals then operating around were enough to take care of the residents’ health.
Now, Baguio is bursting at the seams.
Ever since, Baguio has had lawyers as its mayor, save for the brief stints of Bueno, Bugnosen and Labo. Most of its councilors—the supposed representatives of the people in coming up with policies– had always been lawyers. Can lawyers solve the city’s inexorable march to total decay? Sorry, lawyers are not technically equipped for this.
Most of the candidates for mayor of Baguio are lawyers. The two who are not are Gen. Benjamin Magalong and Leandro Yangot Jr.
Magalong was a police officer specializing in intelligence and counter-terrorism. Yangot is an electrical engineer and obtained a master’s degree in urban planning from Southeast Asia’s most prestigious school on urban planning which is UP Diliman.
We don’t know if an intelligence specialist who had been a police officer can solve the innumerable negative effects of too much urbanization and its unpreventable result which would be urban decay. In this respect, perhaps the candidate with the best qualification to solve this sorry state of the city is one with a degree on urban planning.
The main concern of any urban planner is human ecology. A city’s environment should be conducive to healthy living and must be wholesome enough to afford every resident the chance or opportunity to develop his human potentials to the utmost.
Lawyers can talk about so many things and can craft laws about almost anything, but without the proper qualifications to arrest Baguio’s main problem, such laws might just remain laws or will not solve the problem.
What are the effects of urban decay: diseases, pollution, crimes, poverty, slums and squatting, traffic, lack of economic opportunities, etc.
While these are scary, scarier is the question: Are we doing enough about it?
This coming election might be our best chance to do something about this problem. For our own sake.
But is being an urban planner enough to solve the problem. Definitely not. An indispensable element of being an effective leader is the resoluteness to achieve the goal for the sake of the greater majority. The traditional politicians like lawyers are not capable of this. They live by entering into compromises. President Du30 was not elected because he was a lawyer. That was only incidental. He overwhelmingly won because he was resolute even to the extent of saying that the cadavers of drug addicts will fatten the fish in Manila Bay and in the creeks and other waterways of Metro Manila. And the people overwhelmingly voted for him. He was uncompromising, at least that’s how the people looked at him. Not just a lot of “bola” like what many lawyers are known for.
So what we are looking for is not a man of compromises to lead the city. He must be somebody who is determined, resolute.**
