3rd Cordillera autonomy bill drafted

BAGUIO CITY—The draft measure for a third organic act creating the Cordillera Autonomous Region is on its final leg of consultations before it is sent to the region’s representatives this month so it can be filed at the House of Representatives.

The draft bill is the “affirmative action” that the leaders have decided to set in motion to jump-start a Cordillera economy that struggled through 24 years of “unsustained growth,” according to Kalinga Government Jocel Baac, who is also chair of the Regional Development Council.

Mayor Mauricio Domogan said the document was circulated among the region’s six governors before its submission to the six representatives on August 9. The lawmakers are tasked with fine-tuning the bill and filing it in Congress.

Lawyer Alexander Bangsoy, who led the draft team, said Domogan wanted to make sure that every official and local government has been apprised about it. It would be the region’s third attempt for autonomy after the first two organic acts failed to be ratified in the 1990 and 1998 plebiscites.

Baac said autonomy and the assertion that the Cordillera is Luzon’s premier watershed would provide Cordillerans the drastic steps needed to “break [the] vicious cycle of underdevelopment” that began in 1987 when then President Corazon Aquino created the administrative region through Executive Order 220.

The 24-year growth pattern of the Cordillera economy shows it has not “developed its own economic niche,” and profits from its resources have benefited adjoining regions instead of poor Cordillera provinces, he said.

Half of the region’s 1.5 million residents is engaged in agriculture and forestry, which “now requires affirmative action to progress,” Baac said. He noted that this sector grew by only 2.7 percent.

The Cordillera’s key industry is the Baguio City Economic Zone, which generated $3.2 billion in revenues.

The region needs government to pave or develop 899.22 kilometers of road to help link the provinces, Baac said. Vincent Cabreza, Inquirer Northern Luzon