Goodbye Baguio Convention Center

“Have you seen Baguio lately?”

This was a question one of my UP Law classmates asked another friend of ours at Gilbert Teodoro’s birthday bash at The Fort last Saturday night (yup, the Department of National Defense Secretary and I were blockmates in law school — and even then we knew he was planning to run for President of the Philippines one day). The commenter was upset and aghast. Everyone my age has uber-wonderful memories of the City of Pines. We all knew Baguio when it smelled like Baguio!

We were all busy updating each other on the happenings in our lives and there was much interest in my life as webmaster, and in the current events in Baguio City. And boy was I on the defensive when it came to the current physical, environmental and spiritual state Baguio is in right now — like our beautiful city has deteriorated so much and I felt so responsible because everything bad has been happening under my watch.

So how do I explain to everyone now how Henry Sy & GSIS are kicking Baguio out from our very own Convention Center?

Yup. You heard right.

Remember how our wonderfully “competent” mayor told us “not to panic” because the deal was not yet done? And how he blamed us for neglecting those pine trees beside the Baguio Convention Center? Remember how we were raising the issue of almost 1000 trees that were to be cut to make way for SM Prime Holdings to build a convention hotel and take over Baguio Convention Center?

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