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By Inday Espina-Varona
Third of 4 parts
Efforts by the Alcantara clan of General Santos
City, who occupy a 932-hectare estate ordered returned to
indigenous peoples by the Supreme Court, hastened the departure of
Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Heherson Alvarez
from President Arroyo’s Cabinet.
Alvarez’s exit was scheduled for December 16
last year. It was moved up three days following a December 11 Malacañang
meeting attended by the President and Elisea Gozun, Alvarez’s
successor.
Gozun immediately suspended the department’s
memoranda that would have forced out the pasture and timber
operations of Nicasio and Felicisimo Alcantara in two areas
sanctioned for return to lumad petitioners.
The Alvarez order also paved the way for the
immediate installation of Rolando Paglangan and his representatives
on 300 hectares set aside for their group, with the same procedures
for a similar case.
Besides losing their Forest Land Grazing Lease
Agreement (542) in Apopong, the Alcantaras had also lost a High
Court battle in Cabuay, claimed by the Sinawal Multipurpose
B’laan Farmers’ Cooperative. Nicasio runs the Apopong estate;
his brother, Felicisimo, holds the lease to Cabuay.
The Cabuay land was covered by FLGLA 552, issued
on May 13, 1991, with an original expiry date on June 30, 1994. The
Cabuay lease, however, was increased from 1,400 hectares to 2,000
hectares and extended until June 30, 2019.
Chaos
Gozun’s order sparked a furor. Alvarez, who
retains close ties with Mrs. Arroyo and represents her as
presidential adviser on the overseas Filipino communities, has
accused his successor of defying a Supreme Court order. Much has
been made of Gozun’s ties with the influential Alcantara clan.
However, the Gozun memorandum, which followed an
investigation into department procedures, disclosed several
missteps. Shortcuts had allegedly led to a violation of due process.
Worse, a strategic error provided opportunities for exploitation
that could lead to a new cycle of upheaval on an already bloodied
land.
Gozun’s order noted that Alvarez’s
memorandum on the Apopong estate was issued on November 22, 2002,
only a day after Alcantara’s motion for reconsideration was
denied. A December 5, 2002, memorandum covered the Cabuay estate.
Both actions by Alvarez violated administrative rules that decisions
become final and executory only after parties to a case receive
their copies.
Protesting the new department order, Alvarez and
winning litigants note that the final installation order came more
than a year after the Supreme Court upheld a Court of Appeals
decision favoring lumad claimants to the Alcantara estates. Short of
overturning a Supreme Court ruling, there was nothing Alvarez could
have done to extend the clan’s hold on its operations.
However, the two installation orders, issued by
a community environment officer, Andrew B. Patricio, also had
serious flaws: Failure to identify the adjudged parties or
recognized claimants and failure to secure segregation of the area
by the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples. The latter, Gozun
said, is provided for in the Indigenous People’s Reform Act.
Gozun ordered her department’s field staff to
suspend all surveys on the land, ensure no additional entrants are
allowed into the disputed areas and designate a contiguous area
within the Alcantara estates for temporary occupation by the
rightful claimants.
She also told department personnel to help the
National Commission on Indigenous Peoples do a physical inventory to
safeguard the interests of other claimants and ensure that Alcantara
properties are not touched “pending final resolution of the
remedies they availed themselves of.”
‘Social justice’
In an interview with The Manila Times, Alvarez
dismissed Gozun’s explanation. He was full of bluster and peppered
his discourse with light curses against opponents and critics. The
important thing, he says, is to redress the grievance of the lumad.
Social justice, he claims, was his only motive as a social reformer.
Alvarez, a presidential adviser who holds a
Cabinet rank, is the author of the current agrarian reform law,
which he describes as “perfect.”
The only problem with agrarian reform, he says,
is lack of funds.
The Cooperative Development Authority, created
by a law also authored by Alvarez, would have provided beneficiaries
with critical support.
“But those goddamned colleagues of mine did
not want to fund this. They gave P110 million when I had asked for
billions!”
Alvarez insists Gozun’s role should have been
limited to “the administrative process.”
“Settle them [claimants] there, then hand over
the matter to the NCIP [National Commission on Indigenous
Peoples].”
He says Gozun erred in issuing a hold order and
brushes aside the government and the claimants’ claim of the
influx of squatters.
Says Alvarez, “That’s another issue. But
first you enforce the court order. Then you get the NCIP to do
genealogical surveys.”
And if the squatters are found not to be
B’laan or Maguindanaoan?
Alvarez says like American Indians, scattered
indigenous folk had intermarried with Christian settlers. “If you
have one-fourth B’laan blood, you get a corresponding share of the
land,” he says. Pure indigenous folk, he says, get a bigger share.
NCIP officials smile at this proposal. It’s
very creative, they say, but it’s the first time they’ve heard
of it. The problem is, the Indigenous People’s Reform Act and its
implementing rules and guidelines failed to chart a clear road map
for the NCIP.
Alvarez, perhaps in deference to President
Arroyo, would not discuss Gozun’s ties to the Alcantaras. Earlier,
however, aides had intimated that Gozun had benefited from the clan,
through her husband’s huge “retirement income,” from Alsons,
the Alcantaras’ holding company.
Gozun does not deny the ties to the clan but
insists her order was based solely on the need to protect the
Supreme Court’s decision, by ensuring the land goes to “the
proper claimants.”
Suspicious procedures
Nicasio Alcantara has gone to court again,
contesting in the appellate court the legality of Alvarez’s order.
Gozun insists the cancellation of the Alcantaras’ lease on two
estates remains in force. Yet, while her directives were aimed at
minimizing chaos in a land-rush atmosphere, thousands of
squatters–many of them non-lumad–have invaded the disputed
areas, claiming they have given money to claimants for a right to
homesteads.
The Alcantaras do not deny that Alvarez’s
order to cancel their leases in Apopong and Cabuay came a year after
the Supreme Court affirmed the recommendations of the Commission on
the Settlement of Land Problems to declare the estates ancestral
lands.
Although they acknowledge that the settlement
commission’s recommendations had become final, the Alcantaras
insist that only the national commission has the sole authority to
determine the legitimate claimants, within the parameters of the
court case. Alvarez’s cancellation of their leases came before
either the national commission or the settlement commission could
determine the rightful claimants.
Nicasio’s spokesman, Julian Montemayor, also
casts suspicion on violations of regular procedures in the issuance
of orders. It was Alvarez’s personal security chief, Val Lopez,
who served the cancellation/installation notice on Patricio.
Four days later the community environment
officer issued an order to carry out Alvarez’s memorandum. On the
same day, Patricio issued two orders: the first requiring the
demolition/dismantling of Alcantara’s structures in Apopong within
10 days and the second deleting the time frame.
Patricio would later grant Nicasio a 20-day
extension but ordered him to allow the claimants enter to the
estate.
Alvarez explains Lopez’s role, with a claim
that field officers could not enforce his cancellation order,
because of beefed-up security in the Alcantara estate.
“If you’re a secretary, you want your order
enforced. So I sent him [Lopez] to talk to the Army. Not to enforce
but to seek help in enforcing. I told them to avoid the police
because when you have this kind of huge social problem, it’s
better to get the Army’s help.”
Gozun’s fears are legitimate. Last December 20
General Santos City Mayor Pedro Acharon Jr. sought an investigation
into Alvarez’s December 3 order covering the Cabuay lease of
Felicisimo. Acharon pointed out that although the case beneficiary
was the Sinawal B’laan Multipurpose Cooperative, most of the
people who were installed were residents neither of Sinawal nor of
the B’laan tribe.
Dragging it out
Nicasio had questioned the lumad’s continuous
possession of the land “since time immemorial,” noting that the
original lease was issued in 1935, but the Supreme Court upheld the
settlement commission on this matter, saying the clan had not
refuted the lumad historical claim of being driven from their lands.
The commission’s recommendation to return the land to indigenous
inhabitants noted that the use of fraud and overwhelming force to
evict them from their homelands was a historical fact, supported by
photographs.
The settlement commission also said the
Alcantaras’ claim of breach of contract does not hold water,
because the document itself violated a Marcos presidential decree
that purportedly sought to reinstall displaced indigenous folk. The
Court of Appeals upheld the commission’s ruling altogether.
In contesting Alvarez’s order in the appellate
court, Nicasio said that Alvarez should have first referred the
matter to the national commission to determine the claimants and his
rights as a leaseholder, and identify the 300 hectares Rolando
Paglangan claimed for his group.
He accused Alvarez of issuing the final
cancellation order without prior hearings to determine factual
issues in the contested August 15, 2002, memorandum.
Alcantara has his own take on proper procedures
following the Supreme Court’s ruling. These would require the
following steps:
Creation of an environment department task force
to review any FGLA violations;
Issuance by the report and recommendations of
the task force;
Conduct of hearings by the department’s legal
department before endorsement of the task force report;
Resolution of the status of the case by the
environment secretary;
Endorsement of the recommendation to the Office
of the President for clearance and approval;
Endorsement to the national commission or the
settlement commission for the final verification of valid indigenous
claimants; and
National commission’s recommendation on the
decision “subject to recognizing existing rights of leaseholder
until expiration of contract, which is 2018.”
For the moment, Alcantara is using the legal
process to get his way. This in itself is a relief, considering the
clan’s involvement in more bloody disputes in the Davao provinces.
(See Part 4 tomorrow)
Political clout
But Nicasio may be asking too much. His proposed
procedures would in effect return the issue to square one. In this
light, and given that Gozun seems to be following at least the first
steps of his proposed process, the concerns raised by Alvarez and
the claimants are valid.
The Alcantara model would drag on the case for
years, opening up the issue to vagaries of political expediency.
That President Arroyo has taken a personal hand
in the issue also raises suspicion that once more the Alcantaras are
using their political clout to protect their interests in Mindanao.
A member of the clan, Tomas Alcantara, was former trade secretary.
Nicasio, president of Petron Corp., is himself a member of a close
circle of informal presidential advisers.
Earlier, former President Fidel V. Ramos had
written to his environment secretary, Victor Ramos, to heap praise
on Alcantara’s operations in General Santos City. Shortly after,
the department granted Alcantara an extension on his
lease–although the winning litigant, Paglangan, had already filed
an ancestral claim.
Says the appellate court’s petition for
certiorari’s preparatory statement: “Heads of departments,
bureaus and offices in the Office of the President are the
latter’s alter egos, and the President can validly overrule them.
Thus, under Administrative Order No. 18 (Series of 1987) of the
Office of the President, an appeal [to the same office] shall be
taken within 30 days from receipt by the aggrieved party of the
decision/resolution/order [of departments].”
Alcantara, however, has taken the President out
of the line of fire with his petition to the appellate court, which
premises the search for judicial, rather than administrative, action
on the following factors:
Violation of due process;
Focus on a purely legal question;
Patently illegal administrative action
displaying lack or excess of jurisdiction;
The presence of irreparable injury;
Circumstances that indicate unreasonable delay
could greatly prejudice the complaint; and
Involvement of strong public interest.
Julian Montemayor, overseer of the Alcantara
estate, says a decision of a Cabinet member can always be appealed
with the Office of the President.
The Alcantaras, Montemayor says, decided against
that option, because “they did not want to put the President in a
bad light, to have her official family squabbling.”
So they went to the Court of Appeals to contest
Alvarez’s order canceling FLGLA 542.
In his appeal, Alcantara hangs on to his lease,
claiming the Indigenous People’s Reform Act declares that
contracts “must be respected” when the land is placed under the
category of ancestral domain. He cites the investment of “a great
deal of fortune for the improvement of the [lease] area.”
The settlement commission’s recommendation
found Alcantaras’ lease flawed from the start. The appellate
court’s decision, affirmed by the Supreme Court, upheld the
commission’s ruling altogether.
Alcantara scores the settlement commission for
designating 923 hectares as ancestral lands when Paglangan sought
only a 300-hectare portion. He questions the cancellation of his
lease because that issue was not raised by Paglangan. It was,
however, tackled in the settlement commission’s decision,
apparently because Alcantara raised the issue of breach of contract
in his argument.
At the least, Alcantara says, Alvarez should
have given him a proper hearing, since he had never been charged
with violating the terms of the lease.
Ooops, bad moves
With the Supreme Court ruling, it is a wonder
that the department under Alvarez undertook such a hasty, haphazard
manner to cement a solid legal victory for the lumad.
For example, Patricio’s orders to carry out
Alvarez’s memoradum are curious. First, he gives Alcantara barely
10 days to dismantle an operation that has existed for decades and
that involves millions of pesos in infrastructure work. His second
order is worse, calling for Alcantara to remove all his improvements
“immediately.” Short of blasting his estate to kingdom come, no
way could Alcantara have complied with the community environmental
officer’s orders.
Those two orders followed successively in one
day. The next day, November 27, 2002, Patricio ordered Alcantara to
allow the “adjudged party” to enter the leasehold.
The latter moves by the department also
contradicted Alvarez’s original installation order, issued on
August 15, 2002. That order canceled Alcantara’s lease and placed
the land and its resources under department control, “pending the
final distribution by the national commission of the subject lands
among the indigenous cultural group concerned.”
Alvarez denies knowledge of Patricio’s series
of conflicting orders, as well as Datu Nasser Pendatun’s
identification of Lopez as the man who persuaded him to sign
documents attacking Gozun and national commission officials. Lopez
has not replied to The Times’ request for an interview, coursed
through Alvarez’s office.
Alcantara had earlier lost a challenge covering
the settlement commission’s authority to hear the case, since the
Indigenous People’s Reform Act mandates the national commission as
the proper agency to hear disputes over ancestral domains. The Court
of Appeals, however, upheld the settlement commission’s position
that it had the authority to hear land disputes if the national
commission and the environment department fail to act on complaints.
Paglangan’s complaint with the settlement commission said he had
laid claim to the Apopong land as early as 1990 but that he had been
ignored by the department, which extended Alcantara’s claim in
1995.
On November 29, 2002, Alcantara sought an
injunction from the appellate court. He may not have needed it.
President Arroyo and Gozun have proved to be very cooperative
allies.
Contradictory moves
Other aspects of the Alcantara case also show
how government agencies can work at cross purposes.
In an interview, Councilor Zoilo Abing said the
city government had already applied for cancellation of the lease
through a presidential proclamation but that the papers remain at
the level with the environment department.
Said Abing: “We negotiated with the Alcantaras.
We asked them to give that land, since they already have a big area
of pastureland, almost 7,000 [6,751] hectares covering five areas,
almost half of General Santos City’s total pasture area of 15,649
hectares.”
During the negotiations, the Alcantaras asked to
be in charge of the new township development. “Mahirap yata
’yan, that’s for poor constituents,” Abing said. “We need
that for 13,000 urban-poor residents. We told them, maybe they can
be in charge of the commercial district.”
Abing, who heads the council committee
investigating the Alcantara land dispute, sought from the National
Commission on Indigenous Peoples the list of areas being claimed by
the B’laan, Maguindanaoan and other lumad folk.
Documents show lumad claims cover 11,557
hectares, involving 25 areas. The city’s total land area, Abing
says, is 53,606 hectares. Of this, 29 families control 15,649
hectares of pastureland, with the Alcantaras accounting for almost
half.
The township plan was first broached by Mayor
Lita Nuñez, who was aided by environment officials during the
negotiations.
Montemayor says there were about four meetings.
Negotiations had reached the stage of the city coming up with a
development plan and passing this to the Alcantaras, for
determination of their participation.
Elections halted the negotiations but the next
mayor, Adel Antonino, pursued the plan.
The city government came out with a memorandum
of agreement with the Alcantaras. This was, however, rejected by the
environment department’s legal department, which noted that
reversion of the land to the state required signatories to be
government agencies.
“Adel didn’t like that,” says Montemayor.
The ranch owners were bemused, he says, because nothing changed but
the signatories in the second draft.
During this period, the Alcantara lease was
already being reviewed for renewal.
“Because Adel did not want to sign, we went
back to the DENR, which nullified the memorandum, and renewed our
pasture lease,” says Montemayor.
When Antonino found out, he came out with a
proposal for an economic zone and free port and pursued it through a
presidential proclamation. Unfortunately for Antonino, his ally,
then-President Joseph Estrada, was deposed by People Power 2.
Asked whether the Alcantaras would have worked
with Antonino, Montemayor complained about “malice.”
“Why did he not sign the memorandum [with the
DENR]? The next thing we knew, he had a different memorandum and
this was between the city government and the military and national
housing authorities.”
The new memorandum covered more than 100
hectares of land within the estate.
The planned relocation site for the urban poor
of incumbent Mayor Pedro Acharon Jr., covering 41.6 hectares, also
lies inside the estate.
Montemayor questions why the community
environment officer, Andrew Patricio, approved the plan.
“Who is he to approve that? It’s a national
decision,” the Alcantara overseer complained. “’Yun pala and
cancellation, panahon ni Ceriles, meron na.”
Acharon notes that a decision by the settlement
commission dating from 1927 classifies the land as alienable and
disposable. But that, Montemayor claims, was superseded by an
administrative order in 1982, by the former Ministry of Natural
Resources.
Nevertheless, when Alvarez made his decision,
the Alcantaras talked to Acharon.
“We asked him to take a more active role,”
Montemayor told The Times. “We said if the issue is resolved [in
favor of the Alcantaras], we can go back to waive the rights to the
923 hectares.”
“We don’t want to block money,” Montemayor
insists. “If the city government has a viable development plan, we
will support it.”
Montemayor also scores the environment
department’s inefficiency. When Gozun met last week in Davao with
claimants to the land, the department’s regional deputy executive
director called to ask for copies of the pasture lease, he said.
“He said they were looking for this agreement.
Nawawala ang record sa region. They asked us for copies.”
Montemayor suspects the records were filched by
parties concerned with the Alcantaras’ “legitimate” hold on
the land. His comments indicate he suspects former city government
officials, rather than lumad supporters, as the culprits.
(To be continued)
Part 1
| Part 2 | Sidebar
to Part 2 | Conclusion
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