By DELIA BAGNI
www.nordis.net

BAGUIO CITY — In support to the plea of Baguio residents to stop the removal of 182 heritage pine trees in favor of a mall expansion here, Sting moved his concert venue from the Mall Of Asia Arena (MOAA) to Smart -Araneta Coliseum, according to a statement released on October 9.

International music artist Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner better known as Sting, a top billing British musician, was the principal songwriter, lead singer and bassist of the rock band The Police before he went solo. He is scheduled to have a big concert on December.

Sting changed the venue of his concert personally upon receiving pleas from Baguio residents to change the venue because the MOAA is part of a company that owns the SM mall here that scheduled the uprooting of 182 trees for an expansion of the mall and has refused to heed the appeals to conserve the trees instead.

Lawyer Cheryl Daytec-Yañgot, a founding member of the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL) and a legal counsel of Project Save 182 opposing SM’s cutting of trees, wrote a letter informing Sting of an online petition asking the singer to change his concert venue accompanied by a video of the mass indignation rally in April this year where thousands of locals made a public appeal to “save the trees”. The petition was signed by 393 facebook users that time.

On their posts, Project Save 182 was born on January 20, 2012 when more than 5,000 people gathered in front of SM Baguio to protest their planned mall expansion. SM and the local government kept things under wraps, they said. Public consultations as mandated by Philippine law and even international law were not conducted and the project did not and does not bear the stamp of social acceptability. Since then people have not stopped protesting this development project.

Qouting from Daytec’s facebook post, “I wrote a letter to Sting’s agents appealing that they abandon SM-Mall of Asia Arena as the venue for the musician’s December concert. Sting, a voice of the oppressed, cannot sing in the halls of the oppressor.”

Another leading member of the Project Save 182, Karlo Marko Altamonte sent another letter to the Rainforest Foundation which was founded by Sting and Trudie Styler on the same appeal to withdraw the concert from the venue.

Sting is singer-songwriter, activist, actor and philanthropist who strongly supports environment conservation and humanitarian movements such as Amnesty International. Sting wrote and sings songs “expressing an angry indictment of apathy in the face of world hunger, torture”. One of his singles entitled “They Dance Alone” expresses the cries of wives, mothers, daughters and sons of dissapeared and victims in Chile who cannot voice out their grief because of fear that they might also go missing. He is a member of both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Ovation Productions, the promoter of the coming concert, confirmed on the net that the Back to Bass Concert Tour is now moved to Araneta Coliseum and the show date is still December 9, 2012. Exchange and refunds of tickets started this October 25 at the ticket office of Smart Araneta Coliseum until November 18. The management assured that the fans who have reserved seats will still receive reserved tickets. # nordis.net