Years ago we had a mayor who said, “I cannot do anything.” Now we have a mayor who says, “Local government does not have the capability.” It would appear that these mayors are helpless. They would have us believe that admitting lack of capacity is an example of good governance. By admitting these things, are they not being transparent? Are they not being humble? Does this not make them good leaders?

Coincidentally, both mayors said what they said in relation to SM in Baguio City. Rep. Mauricio Domogan said “I cannot do anything” in 2013 when Baguio citizens asked him, the mayor at the time, to stop SM City Baguio from cutting down 182 trees on Luneta Hill.

Incumbent Mayor Benjamin Magalong says “local government does not have the capability” when he insists that the only way to redevelop the Baguio Public Market is through a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) with SM Prime Holdings Inc. (SMPHI). He echoes a belief emanating from the national government, which would see PPP’s implemented across the country to propel us into modernization.

What ails our leaders?

Hypothetical question: Is it the influence of a wealthy corporation that causes them to fold so easily, to readily admit lack of capacity? To become helpless?

Hypothesis: Our government leaders are not helpless but they choose to place their faith in private entities with large amounts of capital to offer. So they need us to believe that it’s best for us if they surrender government responsibility—their responsibility—to these private entities. Our government leaders are not being humble or honest when they claim they cannot do anything or that they lack capacity. Rather, they need us to accept that there’s nothing we can do.

Other officials in City Hall have swallowed the same pill. They seem to have made it their jobs to remind us, the citizenry, that when it comes to redeveloping our Baguio Public Market or making decisions about urban mobility, things such as public participation and social processes are simply too expensive to even attempt. At public “consultations” they say, “It costs money that we don’t have.” They tell the people, “You need cash in the bank.”

Helpless people are more readily converted to new faiths.

Have faith

They want us to believe that surrendering public services and offering public land at the altar of a large corporation will bring us closer to a Modernized Paradise. Under this belief system, concrete and steel are miraculous substances. Much like turning water into wine, concrete and steel turn injustice into new roads, shiny multi-story structures, flood control dikes, dams, reclamations, shopping malls, and other concrete symbols of modernization. Build, build, build and it will be like poverty, oppression, dispossession, graft and corruption never existed, especially if they build walls tall enough to hide these things from view.

In this faith, large conglomerates and corporations are praised and bestowed with god-like powers. Because they have something we and our local governments don’t have: obscene amounts of wealth. (Leaving aside for the moment ill-gotten wealth and questionable government spending.) Corporations can throw unbelievable amounts of money at any problem and the faithful believe that the problem then disappears. Corporations can make entire communities, rivers, reefs, forests and mountains disappear. Not only that, their money magically increases, no matter how much they bestow on us mere mortals.

Take SMPHI and the proposed PPP, for example. As published by our local government, 48% of the land area of the public market will be managed by SM in the redevelopment they propose; 52% will be managed by the city. In the terms of the proposal, practically half the land the public market currently occupies will be managed by SMPHI for 50 years. SMPHI will allegedly spend a grand P4.5 billion to redevelop the market. SMPHI is generous. Our mayor tells us that this is SMPHI’s legacy project for Baguio City. We are blessed.

We know from the (redacted) proposal disseminated by the local government that SMPHI will build and manage an eight-story parking building and a three-story commercial center beside the public market. There is no non-compete clause in the negotiated terms. SMPHI can sell the same things that our market vendors sell. But not to worry, says our mayor. SM’s products will be more expensive so surely our vendors and local businesses can compete. Have faith.

SMPHI will take less than half of the public market’s land, build, build, build, and then by the miracle of investments and what is then owed to our benevolent investors, they will manage 68% of the newly built commercial spaces, while the city will manage the remaining 32% for the public market.

History shows that under this belief system, the rich get richer and the prayers of the poor and vulnerable go unanswered. In societies that embrace this belief, one’s worth and rights depend on one’s ability to make, accumulate and spend money (in businesses owned by the same large corporations that already dominate our daily lives). This belief system is steadily eroding our will to act.

If we accept corporations as our saviors, we accept that the driving forces of good governance and development are money, infrastructure, revenues and profit, not people. If we embrace this faith, like our government leaders have before us, we surrender our ability to collectively create regenerative landscapes for the well-being of all. We give it over to rich corporations and top-down technocrats to shape our futures.

False idols

But we know now, don’t we, that wealth and infrastructure are false idols propped up by a corrupt and broken government system?

No, they will say. Our modernization is not a false idol, they will say, not a matter of blind faith. It is rational, data-based. It is progress based on economic policies and laws such as the big and beautiful PPP Code of the Philippines. It has manageable concrete parts, scientific controls, and measurable outcomes. It is The Way Forward, they preach. Without it, we will be Left Behind.

I’m not convinced. As we saw in the massive student walk-outs in Baguio and La Trinidad yesterday, the youth to whom the future belongs are not convinced. What’s so rational about a system that treats human rights, the more-than-human, collective well-being, the plight of our planet, and the climate crisis as externalities? Believing that one can invest, exploit, and extract indefinitely, in the name of accumulating wealth and infinite growth? That requires blind faith.

Not even science upholds this belief. We are going to be “left behind” not because we question corporate-sponsored redevelopment, but because our leaders do not listen to what science is actually saying about our possible local futures.

The struggle to protect the Baguio Public Market from corporate interest and government inadequacy is showing us that other ways of living and thriving are possible. When we organize and rally our communities to save our Public Market, we are spitting out the bitter pill of helplessness being shoved down our throats. When we protest the proposed expansion of SM’s presence in Baguio City, we are rejecting the myth of corporate benevolence.

We are questioning the deadening belief that a corporation should be granted more power than the citizenry. We are reclaiming our right as citizens to determine how we shall live and how our city will grow. We are exercising our creativity and strengthening our collective agency—the Will to Do and to Be on our terms. We are not helpless. We are putting our faith in each other, in our neighbors, sukis, friends, colleagues and grassroots leaders, not in faceless corporations or promises of profits most of us will never taste.

Red pill or blue pill?

Are they listening? Will our government officials place their faith in the power of local communities and work with the people? Can they find the strength to lead on the foundation of our collective will? Will they vote “yes” to SMPHI’s proposed Baguio expansion? Are they public servants or prophets of corporate-sponsored and corporate-controlled progress?

We can hope and we can do more. We can raise our voices. We can organize, educate ourselves, and work for locally-determined futures where well-being is not determined by wealth.

But who am I to speak of faith, profits, prophets and progress? I’m just a woman full of feelings shouting from a soapbox in the middle of the market while our mayor and city councilors—almost all men—meet at a respectable venue (no, not City Hall) and make rational decisions with measurable outcomes behind closed doors, unbothered by the voices of the people.

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