THE number of the youngsters who came was controlled, limited. The day was supposed to be for their elders who were charged to chart the future of their progenies, the next generations.
I am talking here of the scenario in Manabo, Abra, last April 24, 2018, mandated opening day for a five-day session to be held by the Cordillera Regional Assembly (CRA) of the Cordillera Administrative Region.
The day proved to be a clear revelation that the world, including the CAR, is going to the young. The olds are there as a conduit to this world evolutionary trend. They should act and serve that way, as transmitters of accumulated wisdom and skill from which wealth emanates.
As I looked of the full audience that Manabo day, I came to be more convinced that what we published in a past issue of this paper is a great need to be pursued.
A second Baguio must be put up conveniently now by the bounds of Malibcong and Manabo, centered in Lamunan. The area is perfect as to geographical and altitudinal location as well as climatic condition.
No wonder, to my mind now, that the opposing forces in World War II engaged in prolonged cat-and mouse skirmishes but not wanting to devastate the place, especially the underground stream flowing towards Daguioman and the nugget-strewn parallel of the Abra-Kalinga Highway but not minding the sound of single-shot rifles aimed at life-sustaining wild animals that roamed on hover over the jungles and rainforests at the time.
To make that second Baguio proactivity well planned for truly human habitation multi-laned interior highways, the length of CAR from Apayao in the north to Benguet in the south must traverse it. Travel time must be shortened to save on dear time and fuel.
(As of the present to go to the interior of Northern CAR, you either pass other from Baguio to Pangasinan, to Tuguegarao, Ecija, to Nueva Vizcaya, Isabela Cagayan, or from Baguio to Ilocos Sur, Ilocos Norte and Cagayan, both ways circulations if not tortuous.)
It is for this reason that the regional capitol is advisably to be built in Manabo, along the big Ikmin River, a main tributary of the Abra, the only means of transportation and trade long before the Ilocos Sur-Abra Highway was built.
It is for this reason also that former CEB executive director Gaspar Cayat prefers an engineer to head with a team of other engineers the reactivating Cordillera Executive Board in order to ably support and participate in the built-build-build program of President Duterte.
Fortunately, we have one in the person of an engineer who had proved his mettle in Benguet roads and internationally in the construction of wide-lane highways spanning the almost endless plains and unpredictable mounds of Arabian deserts.
His expertise should not be left to waste in our Cordillera wastelands. And we have more of such scientists in the Cordilleras. Mind you, we have and they can be tapped to help for a more progressive Philippines.
I have seen them in the progressively developing countries neighboring ours that were in years past sending their young men and women to study in Los Baños and other Philippines schools of higher studies including the military.
This situation has made us move for autonomy in order not to be shackled unto stagnancy by national laws and rules that are inapplicable to the interior highlands of Northern Luzon, either physically or socially.
I heard the mumblings of highland road engineers led by a road observer Engr. Reyes when our education team was assigned by then Educ. Secretary Narciso Albarracin to help SLC in its bid to become SLU where to together with Dr. Alfonso Garcia I handled the Publication Office and the research journal Saint Louis Quarterly of the Graduate School just as I did in the cases of Baguio Tech to UB, UC to U-Pang, and MSAC to BSU, to the last especially.
(A college mentor of mine, a German machine-gunner in the Alsace-Loraine line, had impressed me with “Before wars are won in the battleships they are won first in the academe”.)
Fr. Balweg also came to show that; this sacrifices should not be left to waste because his rare patriotic kind will come again only after another hundred years, according to pundits. So, while Digong is here, no more hesitancy, autonomy toward federalism.
A Mailed Molina knows to evaluate that; he was the Father’s sacristan. To punctuate things, an OPAP Secretary further assured, “Give us the vision and mission of Fr. Balweg and we will follow it.”