A recent decision by the Court of Appeals (CA) effectively delayed the distribution of land via agrarian reform in Nasugbu, Batangas, owned by publicly listed Roxas and Co. Inc. (RCI)
In a 28-page decision penned by Associate Justice Zenaida Galapate-Laguilles, the CA’s Fifth Division has nullified the notice of coverage under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) issued by the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) over the 3,000-hectare Hacienda Roxas.
The CA decision threw out resolutions issued by the DAR on October 16, 2013, and April 15, 2014, that rejected RCI’s protest over the government’s move to put the land, equivalent to about 39 hectares Cultural Center of the Philippines complex, under Carp. The DAR also rejected RCI’s motion for reconsideration over the notice of coverage the agency published on October 22, 2012, which ordered Hacienda Roxas be distributed to farmers.
The CA’s decision now prompts the DAR to serve RCI a new notice of coverage. The CA also ordered that the DAR immediately (with deliberate dispatch) complete the redocumentation and validation process concerning the farmer-beneficiaries and the properties they hold in trust.
Hacienda Roxas covers three estates namely, Hacienda Palico (1,024 hectares), Banilad (1,050 hectares) and Caylaway (about 867 hectares), sprawling over nine villages in Nasugbu.
“Petitioner [RCI] was, indeed, deprived of its tracts of land when public respondent DAR published the notice of coverage on October 22, 2012, and subsequently denied its protest against the same through the criticized order and resolution,” the CA said.
The CA decision noted that the DAR began its move for the compulsory acquisition of Hacienda Roxas in 1999. However, the court accused the DAR of failing to inform RCI, which portions of its estates were being placed under Carp and which portions were excluded.
The CA decision comes eight years after the Supreme Court (SC) denied RCI’s appeal to declare its two haciendas—Banilad and Caylaway—and portions of Hacienda Palico, all in Nasugbu, Batangas, exempt from the coverage of the Carp.
In 2009 the SC reversed and set aside the CA resolution that cited Presidential Proclamation (PP) 1520 as having reclassified the lands in the municipalities of Nasugbu in Batangas and Maragondon and Ternate in Cavite to nonagricultural use. Then-President Ferdinand E. Marcos issued PP 1520 in 1975.
Court documents revealed that RCI assumed its haciendas are part of what PP 1520 declared as a tourism zone. RCI also based their claims on the assumption that PP 1520, which declared Nasugbu, Batangas, as tourism zone reclassified their estate to nonagricultural use even prior to the effectivity of the comprehensive agrarian-reform law on June 1988.
The High Tribunal, however, ruled that PP 1520 merely recognized the “potential tourism value” of certain areas within the area declared as tourism zones and did not immediately reclassify them as nonagricultural.
However, the recent CA decision said that under the law, a landowner may retain not more than 5 hectares out of the total area of his agricultural land subject to the Carp.
“How may petitioners exercise their right of retention when, in the first place, they have no inkling of which particular portions of their properties are to be acquired by public respondent DAR?” the CA said. Without the DAR’s clear-cut and definite delineations, as determined through surveys, the CA said the petitioner “will be highly susceptible to being deprived of its properties.”
“But more than petitioner’s few choice words for public respondent DAR, a perusal of the assailed issuances reveals, to this very Court, that the 1987 Constitution and pertinent law have certainly been transgressed. To us, petitioner RCI’s right to due process of law has once again been violated,” the CA said.
The CA decision also noted that Section 18 of DAR Administrative Order 07-11 requires the publication of the notice of coverage to state the “coverage of the subject landholding under the CARP on the specific land-acquisition schedule.”
“An indication ‘with specificity’ which ‘areas delineated by metes and bounds, are to be covered and acquired by the DAR’ is of paramount importance because Section 15 of DAR Administrative Order 07-11 requires the notice of coverage to state the period within which the landowner may file a manifestation to exercise the right of retention,” the decision read.