While we all carried on with our day-to-day toil, so has progress marched on the big-ticket developments pursued by the city and its governance. Rather quietly, these projects have continued humming away in the background. Out of sight, out of mind.
Adages say that if the machine is working smoothly and as intended, we will never notice that it is operating at all – but crucially, this is not and cannot be the norm for the governance machine.
Baguio stakeholders seem to share this sentiment, as this week, residents of the city have banded together to put forward a not-quite strongly worded letter to the mayor and to various other government agencies (to whom it may concern).
The content of the letter is simple: papers, please?
The letter request-demands a few things, first and foremost amongst them, a proper public consultation. A large one, a public and publicized one, one where the populace can genuinely air out their sentiments, whether good or bad – and given that part of the proposal is the much-maligned congestion charge, there are plenty of bad sentiments to air out.
Generally, the letter just requests full transparency and public involvement. Consultations with the public. Knowing who’s who and who gets to run what. Knowing whether MPTC getting to charge fees is even allowed by the LTFRB, and knowing on what ground, in what capacity are they capable of managing and micromanaging the horrendous traffic problem in Baguio.
These are all entirely reasonable and justified demand-requests; in fact, these are rather tame considering. The mayor faces multiple charges (all simply charges, no guilt has been proven yet) of infrastructure-related corruption, and those are over infrastructure projects that are miniscule in comparison to the scale of these ones. It would be all too easy to bring those doubts to the forefront, to demand more under accusation of corruption, but these are all reasonable asks.
And not just reasonable, these are so important that one could consider this letter should never have existed at all. We the public have every right to be consulted, to know what justifies MPTC’s position and authority over our traffic, where the profits and funding goes, and so on. These are ours by right.
And so, we join the call: papers, please?