BAGUIO CITY—Mayor Mauricio G. Domogan admitted Sunday that the Cordillera cannot exist as an independent federal state based on the concept of federalism.
The practical means available for the region to be intact once the planed shift to federal form of government will be realized is through the realization of the renewed quest for regional autonomy, Domogan added.
The mayor revealed that based on the actual collections of taxes of the Cordillera office of the Bureau of Internal Revenue last year, the 80-percent share of the region is not even sufficient to sustain the operation of the federal state, aside from the share that will be provided to the national government among other unsettled obligations.
In 2016, BIR-CAR managed to collect more than P5.2 billion in taxes regionwide, with 80 percent of the taxes generated in Baguio City alone. Thus, if the federal state will retain the 80 percent of the taxes, then it will only have around P3.9 billion remaining, which will not be enough to sustain the operation of the federal government, Domogan stressed.
In the autonomous setup, Domogan explained the regional autonomous government will be entitled to the funding requirements from the national government, aside from the share of the local governments and the regional government from the subsidy to be provided by the national government—to the tune of P75 billion for the first 10 years of its existence and over P28-billion allocation of the regional line agencies annually, which will be spent solely in the region.
Further, Cordillera would be in a better position to be intact once it is able to achieve autonomy before the realization of the government’s move to change the form of government to a federal system, through the amendment of the pertinent provisions of the 1987 Constitution.
An autonomous region can legally exist within a federal state, Domogan said, and that the State Constitution will be mandated to recognize the existence of the autonomous region without diminution of its rights and privileges.
Domogan claimed the Cordillera will beaten up by the larger provinces in the Northern Luzon federal state like Pangasinan, La Union, Ilocos Sur, Ilocos Norte, Cagayan, and Isabela among others, which have bigger populations and land area. Thus, Cordillerans will have no chance at all to be given the representations to whatever elective positions that will be made available in the federal state.
Cordillerans already experience discrimination when the different cities and provinces were part of Regions I and II, the mayor said.
Cordillerans have a better chance to independently government themselves and maximize the utilization of its rich resources for the development of remote villages and spur economic growth in the future.
This chance to achieve autonomy is during the present administration because of the support shown by President Rodrigo Duterte to the region’s renewed quest for autonomy, wherein his certification is being awaited to make the proposed autonomy bill as an urgent administration measure.