BAGUIO CITY — The first lady Vice Mayor of Baguio City recounts how she was shaped into being a public servant much to the welfare of the people of Baguio because of her involvement in the youth movement when she was young.

Baguio Tourism Council Chief Gladys Vergara said that her leadership journey was flourished through the years with the experiences she earned with the now-defunct Kabataang Barangay (KB), the precursor of today’s Sangguniang Kabataan Federation. She said that through the KB, she was able to hone her leadership skills that would define her career. 

“In my early years, I led Baguio’s Kabataang Barangay and was later elected as the KB Federation Regional President for Region 1,” Vergara shared. The Cordillera Region where Baguio is located was a part of Region I prior to being an administrative region. She said that her KB experiences shaped her deeper understanding of leadership and service. Vergara added she carried the lessons from experiences and was able to apply them to her later roles.

Vergara’s commitment to public service saw her rise through the ranks, beginning as the elected KB president of Upper QM Barangay, then as the KB City Federation President of Baguio where she was appointed as a representative of the youth in the Baguio City Council in 1986. She was elected as the vice president of the KB National Executive Council in 1987.

Her leadership journey took a historic turn during the turbulent political landscape of the early 1990s. In the 1988 elections, Ramon “Jun” Labo, a well-known faith healer, won the mayoralty race in Baguio City but was later disqualified due to citizenship issues, resulting in Jaime Bugnosen becoming the city mayor. The 1992 elections saw Labo win again, only to face another disqualification.

This sequence of events led to then-Vice Mayor Mauricio Domogan ascending to the mayoral post, with Vergara, who had been elected as the number two city councilor in 1988, succeeding Domogan as the first female vice mayor of Baguio City.

One of the venues she said that can boost the youth’s leadership capabilities is through their active involvement in youth organizations like the SK.

KB was created on 15 April, 1975 and was abolished by the Local Government Code of 1991. It was later replaced by the SK.