  The hidden local symmetry effective theory, Wilsonian matched to QCD at a
matching scale near the chiral scale $\sim 4\pi f_\pi$ as formulated by Harada
and Yamawaki, presents a scenario drastically different from the standard
scenario of heavy-ion collisions in that as the temperature approaches the
critical temperature $T_c$ of chiral restoration from below, the mass of the
vector mesons and their widths go to zero in the chiral limit or nearly zero
otherwise, proportionally to some power of the quark condensate at what is
called "vector manifestation (VM) fixed point". This scenario makes a striking
prediction that as the fire-ball expands and cools from $T_c$ down toward the
freezeout temperature $T_{freezeout}$ in heavy ion collisions, what we call
"hadronic freedom" sets in in which hadrons do not interact or barely interact.
We suggest that this scenario is testable at RHIC and as a specific example, we
provide an astonishingly simple explanation in terms of the vector
manifestation suitably extended to include axial-vector mesons for the
anomalously large $\rho^0/\pi^-$ ratio measured in peripheral collisions by
STAR.
