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THE Supreme Court has junked the petition of Asia’s Emerging
Dragon Corp. (AEDC) to take over the control and operations of the
controversial Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal (NAIA) 3.
In its appeal, the AEDC, owned by taipan Lucio
Tan, sought the intervention of the High Court to compel the
government to award the NAIA 3 to them.
But the High Court, in a 62-page en banc
decision penned by Associate Justice Minita Chico-Nazario, dismissed
AEDC’s petition for lack of merit, saying that rights or
privileges of an original proponent of an unsolicited infrastructure
project “are never meant to be absolute,” adding that the
petition for mandamus is also “substantially and procedurally
flawed.”
Voting 7-4, with four justices abstaining, the
High Court also threw out for being moot and academic the second
petition filed by Ilocos Sur Rep. Salacnib Baterina, which assailed
the propriety of the government’s move to expropriate the
mothballed airport facility on the ground that the NAIA 3 is already
a public property.
In its petition for intervention, Baterina
sought to stop the government from paying the Philippine
International Airport Terminals Co. (Piatco) the proffered value
amounting to P3 billion.
“Contrary to Baterina’s stance, Piatco’s
entitlement to just and equitable consideration for its construction
of NAIA 3 and the propriety of the Republic’s resort to
expropriation proceedings were already recognized and upheld by this
Court in Agan and Gingoyon [cases],” the High Court stressed.
Chief Justice Reynato Puno and Associate
Justices Consuelo Ynares-Santiago, Ma. Alicia Austria-Martinez,
Conchita Carpio Morales, Dante Tinga and Teresita Leonardo-De Castro
concurred with the ruling.
Those who dissented were Associate Justices
Renato Corona, who wrote a dissenting opinion, Leonardo Quisumbing,
Presbitero Velasco Jr. and Arturo Brion, while Associate Justices
Antonio Carpio, Eduardo Nachura, Adolf Azcuna and Ruben Reyes
abstained from the proceedings.
AEDC filed its petition to operate the airport
facility 20 months after the High Court rendered its judgment on the
main case, Agan v. Piatco, on May 2003.
In that case as well as in Republic of the
Philippines vs. Gingoyon, which was decided by the High Court on
December 19, 2005, it ruled that the contract to award the NAIA 3
project to Piatco is null and void, but that the government should
pay just compensation to cover the cost of putting up the project.
The High Court warned that a contrary ruling
would potentially hold the government “hostage” to lop-sided
“unsolicited projects” in the future.
-- William B. Depasupil
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