SC upholds city’s bid to demolish Busol structures

By Aileen P. Refuerzo

BAGUIO CITY – The Supreme Court sustained the city government’s bid to demolish structures within the Busol Watershed in 2006.

Mayor Reinaldo Bautista Jr. and city legal officer Melchor Carlos Rabanes hailed the decision as monumental and a big boost to the city’s campaign against squatting.

“This should serve as a warning to squatters to keep off our watersheds and other reservations,” Rabanes said.

In a decision dated Feb. 4, 2009 penned by Associate Justice Dante Tinga, the court reversed an earlier decision of the Court of Appeals which upheld the jurisdiction of the National Commission on Indigenous People to issue temporary restraining orders and later a preliminary injunction to stop the implementation of the three demolition orders issued by then Mayor Braulio Yaranon for the dismantling of the illegal structures constructed by Lazaro Bawas, Alexander Ampaguey Sr. and a certain Mr. Basatan.

Structure occupants Elvin Gumangan, Narciso Basatan and Lazaro Bawas filed a petition for injunction and restraining orders before the NCIP Cordillera claiming the lots within the watershed are their ancestral lands and that their ownership of said lots “have been expressly recognized in Proclamation No. 15 dated April 27, 1922” which declared the areas as a forest reservation.

NCIP-CAR regional hearing officer Brail Masweng granted the petition which was later upheld by the Court of Appeals.

The city government through city legal officer Rabanes elevated the case to the Supreme Court contending that the NCIP has no jurisdiction to issue the restraining orders and injunction and that the city is governed by its charter and “thus, (lot occupants) cannot claim their alleged ancestral lands under the provisions of the Indigenous People’s Rights Act (IPRA).”

In its decision, the higher court struck down the appellate court’s decision upholding the NCIP actions maintaining that the lot occupants’ ancestral land claim was not expressly recognized by Proclamation No. 15 which should have justified the issuances made by the NCIP.

The court said Proclamation No. 15 “does not appear to be a definitive recognition of private respondents’ ancestral land claim.”

“The proclamation merely identifies the Molintas and Gumangan families, the predecessors-in-interest of private respondents, as claimants of a portion of the Busol Forest Reservation but does not acknowledge vested rights over the same. In fact, Proclamation No. 15 explicitly withdraws the Busol Forest Reservation from sale or settlement,” the decision reads.

“The fact remains, too, that the Busol Forest Reservation was declared by the Court as inalienable in Heirs of Gumanagan v.Court of Appeals. The declaration of the (reservation) as such precludes its conversion into private property. The courts are not endowed with the jurisdictional competence to adjudicate forest lands,” the courts added.

“All told, although the NCIP has the authority to issue temporary restraining orders and writs of injunction, we are not convinced that private respondents are entitled to the relief granted by the Commission,” the court said.