SM Baguio fulfills deforestation promise

(Originally published in the April 15-21, 2012 issue of the Baguio Chronicle ---

a weekly newspaper based in Baguio City, Philippines ---

by Sly L. Quintos, Associate Editor.)

MALL giant SM Baguio this week made true of its long-standing threat to deforest its backyard along Gov. Pack Road to give way to its highly-ambitious business expansion, obviously for maximum profit.

Like an unwanted prophecy, it happened on a cold and moon-lit night last April 9 --- the 70th anniversary of the Fall of Bataan --- as hired laborers started downing the trees like the proverbial thieves in the night. By day-break, protesters estimate about a dozen fallen trees.

Meanwhile, a handful of protesters can only watch in hysteria --- their cries and banging of the malls GI sheet walls drowned by the roar of a backhoe slowly eating its way into the trees’ roots.

  

The Baguio Chronicle was there and saw the entire drama unfold.

Almost simultaneously, SM hired hands blanketed the area with additional GI sheet walls and tarpaulins to block the protesters’ and the public view. Flood lights were directed towards Gov. Pack Road to glare them and their cameras. Eight-foot tall wooden walls were also built literally overnight on all the verandas of the mall to totally block the view from inside. An SM Baguio insider said the walls were later painted with panoramic scenery suggestive of a Fool’s Paradise.

At around 2 o’clock that same morning, while the tree uprooting orgy continued, the protesters knocked at the gates of Baguio City Mayor Mauricio Domogan’s residence at Brookside, only to be turned away, saying that he (the mayor) is not in a position to stop the madness.

The same was confirmed by the mayor in an ambush interview with the Baguio Chronicle last Wednesday morning.

“That is a private property of SM . . . and because it is a private property, the owner has all the right over the said property as outlined by the Civil Code of the Philippines,” Domogan said. He added that the expansion project of SM is covered by an Environmental Compliance Certificate or ECC issued by the Dept. of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), which also included a tree-cutting and earth-balling permits.

“I told them (the protesters) that we do not have basis to prevent (SM from cutting the trees) and I suggested that they better go to court,” the mayor said in the Filipino vernacular. “On the part of the government, what we are guarding only are violations of the land use development plan and the zoning ordinance . . . in this case, they (the protesters) have no reason to block or prohibit the development”.

At about 4 o’clock on that same morning, the protesters planned --- but aborted --- to also knock at the gates of Judge Antonio Esteves in whose hands awaits the fate of the Temporary Environmental Protection Order or TEPO filed by the protesters last February 27. But while the protesters seem flattered by Judge Esteves’ anti-SM pronouncements during the March 15 and 21 hearings, Esteves’ ruling remained on hold, leaving the petitioners hanging in utter uncertainty until SM commenced the onslaught.

The protesters’ lawyers worked practically all night long and decided to push their luck with an Urgent Motion for the Issuance of the Temporary Environmental Protection Order. It was promptly filed on the morning of Tuesday (April 10) before Pairing Judge Cleto R. Villacorta III which he granted with a 72-hour (three days) life span. Meanwhile, Judge Esteves was on sick leave that day.

In his Order, Villacorta contended that he is hearing the case because “the matter is of extreme urgency”.

“It is of extreme urgency because the trees are being cut or transferred or earth-balled, whatever the intention is, by the defendants, particularly the private defendants (SM),” Villacorta said in his Order.

“It is of extreme urgency because once the trees are cut, I do not know of any technology that (can) will  bring them back to life,” Villacorta added. “There is also grave injustice or irreparable injury because the principal prayer of the plaintiffs is for the prevention of the earth-balling or the cutting of the trees . . . if (the) private defendant’s act would continue, what will the environmental court be hearing thereafter? Obviously, perhaps, none.”

“What is being enjoined from taking place as an act of the defendant or any person acting on its behalf is the cutting of trees, the earth-balling of the trees, as well as the uprooting of the trees from the ground,” Villacorta made clear in his Order.

On the same day (April 10) at about 2 o’clock in the afternoon, SM Baguio’s Karren Padilla (Nobres) sent an e-mail to the Baguio Chronicle (and presumably to the media at-large) saying that “SM City Baguio . . . has begun its expansion and redevelopment project”.

She admitted that earth-balling of the trees have started and that “consultations between SM’s technical, engineering, and design department and the Department of Environment and Natural resources as well as other environmental experts” have been done.

Meanwhile, DENR’s Regional Director for the Cordillera, Clarence Baguilat, has advised SM to comply with the TEPO “without prejudice to whatever actions your lawyers may take and further Orders from the Honorable Court hearing the main case”.

As the protesters remain skeptical, newspapers reports say that SM is willing to comply with the TEP0.

Taking it to the streets

ON Wednesday afternoon, shield- and truncheon-welding policemen blocked more than a thousand protesters on their way to Luneta Hill led by Bishop Carlito Cenzon who earlier called for an all-out boycott of SM.

“We can survive without SM,” the Bishop said at the Baguio Cathedral grounds where the protesters earlier assembled, reiterating his boycott call. “SM needs us but we do not need SM.”

Meanwhile, SM chose to meet the protesters in a rather sarcastic way by putting up high-decibel public address system repeatedly playing an SM jingle to drown the protesters call.

“SM refuse to meet us at a more intellectual level,” a protester said. “That is all they are capable of. Mga g_g_!”

Denunciations

ARTIST and environmental activist Karlo Marko Altomonte said the issue at hand is no longer about the 192 trees that SM intends to kill “but the breakdown of social order in Baguio City”, referring to the TEPO which SM continues to defy and disregard. He also denounced Mayor Domogan’s and the City Council’s continued disregard of the people’s clamor to stop the impending killing of the trees.

Referring to the TEPO, he said the police escorted the protesters’ lawyers in serving the TEPO but were left to the mercy of the SM private security guards who engaged the protesters in a brief but tense physical pushing and pulling while the police were just watching from the sides.

“This is what SM did to Baguio. It corrupted our social order. We have a court order which SM continues to disregard. We have an inutile chief executive (mayor) and a city council who conducted a Moro-Moro (farce) public hearing only to say it is not the proper forum to bring the issue and a police that responds only if it is the SM who calls for help but indifferent if it is the people who calls for help,” Altomonte lamented.

“It was so heartbreaking,” Atty. Cheryl Chyt L. Daytec-Yangot said, referring to the police’s indifference while her group was being harassed by the security guards of SM.

“We do not trust anybody from the government anymore,” she added. “They are incompetent, they are corrupt; they can’t really help us; we have done everything that is legal.”

“We have to rely on our strength as people because our government agencies have failed us and they continue to fail us,” she said.

She said the protesters’ legal team is now readying to file another petition to cite SM for indirect contempt of court for willfully disregarding a court order (the TEPO) “and there is another case that we will be filing . . . it is a similar environmental case but there are new facts that we will be alleging which are not in the other complaint”.

She added that “because some legal processes don’t work, we have to resort to meta-legal processes such as vigils”.

Meanwhile, in a statement dated April 11, the Cordillera People’s Alliance or CPA said the cutting of the trees done by SM “is a devious and cowardly act”.

“What happened last night is a wakeup call to the people of Baguio --- for beyond the trees are issues of good governance, transparency, accountability, to which every Baguio citizen is accorded, and ultimately, trampled rights of the Baguio citizenry,” the statement said.

“The state of affairs between and among the stakeholders in this issue is not new: the people fight for life and rights and in connivance --- a destructive project by a big company, backed by government and its agencies,” it added. “At a wider scale, people’s protests, urgent issues and demands have fallen on the State’s deaf ears. In fact, some government agencies and some traditional politicians support and benefit from the big corporations.”

“In defying corporate greed, it must also be understood that the companies and/or corporations involved will not easily give in. They have all the resources to buy off or bribe,” CPA added. “In the case of our beloved Baguio, the people’s movement even earlier on, protested the construction of SM at Luneta Hill. Now that trees have been cut and expansion is surely underway, we are still not hearing from the City Council.”

Similar sentiments were also aired by the AnakBayan and Kabataan partylists and the Tongtongan Ti Umili.*