Baguio Flower Fest ordinance sought to plug ugly woes

March 17, 2019 Community Billboard

BAGUIO CITY — Panagbenga (Baguio Flower Festival) is not all “a bed of flowers”. Ugly woes abound each year since 24 years ago, including infighting over leadership, especially on funds.
To plug these woes, Baguio Mayor Mauricio G. Domogan said there should be ‘an enabling ordinance that clearly defines roles, activities and even how money generated by the crowd drawing festival is spent’.
An ordinance would institutionalize everything from road closures, funding, prizes of street dancers, floats and should end the yearly squabbles, Domogan quipped.
The height of the squabbles peaked this year at the Session Road in Bloom (SRB) where organizers Baguio Flower Festival Foundation Inc. (BFFFI) could dissuade the Liga ng mga Barangay from holding its own promenade style but trade fair-fashioned “baratilyo” half of Session Road.
Domogan said that if he had it, he would have stopped the week-long SRB from March 4-10 just to end the “ugly” bickering’s.
If the ordinance would be in place, there would be no such like it next year, Domogan added.
Association of Barangay Council president and Upper Dagsian Barangay chairman exofficio Michael Lawana had lashed out BFFFI for excluding the Liga ng mga Barangay in all trade fairs of the ongoing flower festival.
Lawana and his group rejected the P30,000 offer of BFFI for each of the 128 barangays and opted to have over 60 stalls along Lower Session Road, instead.
Domogan said, “I do not know why the ‘Liga’ rejected the offer while in fact each barangay would not get as much, considering that they still have to shell out for taxes aside from other expenses during the one-week SRB.”
In the Burnham Baguio Blooms trade fair, 20 stalls have been allotted for the Liga, with the promise that the computed cash equivalent will be turned over.
Meanwhile, Baguio Country Club general manager and Flower Fest executive committee co-chair Anthony de Leon said the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) may come in to probe the Liga’s legality pertaining to the operation of their stalls at the SRB, and warned of tax evasion charges against the Liga and their leaders in the coming days.
Domogan maintained that Panagbenga is a festival and is not a money-making event.
 
Artemio A. Dumlao/ABN