A national treasure’s undoing

BENCHWARMER
Ramon Dacawi

BAGUIO CITY -- City Mayor Mauricio Domogan is right: The preservation of Baguio as “a national treasure” is being undermined by the arbitrary award  to  private claimants of the city’s remaining parks, forest reservations and watersheds by national government agencies.

Unless these titles are nullified and checked, the mayor said, efforts to develop the city, even from the perspective of a technical working group created by President Aquino for such purpose, would prove inutile. 

President Aquino recently created a TWG headed by Tourism Underscretary Ma. Victoria Jasmin to prepare “comprehensive plans and programs to preserve and develop” Baguio and Boracay Island.

Unless nullified and stopped, these controversial and apparently continuing title issuances would lead to Baguio’s undoing, the mayor told members of the TWG in a meeting with city officials the other Monday at the Baguio Countrfy Club.

“This is  a very serious problem of the City of Baguio,”  the mayor said of the awarding of private titles over the Wright Park, Forbes Park, Baguio Dairy Farm, portions of Session Road and, recently, parts of Busol Watershed, a major water source for Baguio and La Trinidad, Benguet. 

The Baguo-Boracay TWG was created under Memorandum Circular No. 47 issued by President Aquino last May 17. The President, through Executive Secretary Paquito Ochoa,  noted that “rapid growth, commecialization, and the lack of a comprehensive develoment and zoning plan have caused the degradation and deterioration of the two localities”.

Mayor Domogan thanked the President for creating the task force but quickly added the titling of parks and reservations would have a costly impact on the preservation and development of Baguio that the Presidential memorandum described as a “national treasure”.

Domogan  said the city, through the office of city legal officer Carlos MelchorRabanes, and the Solicitor General now have their hands full seeking the nullification of private titles issued over the Forbes Park, Wright Park, the Baguio Dairy Farm and portions of Session Rd. under ancestral land claims, aside from a expanded title within the Green Valley area, and, recently, within the Busol Watershed.

“Kulang yong ating coordination (We lack coordination),” the mayor stressed before officials and representatives of the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples, Land Registration Authority, and departments of justice, tourism, environment and natural resources during the half-day session of the TWG.

Briefing the TWG on the history of processing and titling of lots in Baguio, the mayor said the recent awards to private individuals of parks, watersheds and reservations, mostly as ancestral land claims,  are of no legal basis. 

“We are not discriminating against ancestral land claims provided these are valid,” Domogan reiterated. He recalled that as a practising lawyer then, he even served as counsel for some Ibaloy families with  rightful ancestral land claims.

For one, the mayor said, the rule is that if the ancestral claim is in a reservation, it should first be de-listed as a reservation before the claim is acted upon. This process, he said, was apparently not followed in the titling of some government and forest reservations.

In the case of the Wright Park, Domogan said a portion of the Presidential Mansion Compound, together with a 4,000 square-meter titled lot of the city, had been overlapped by the ancestral land titles (CALT) issued by the NCIP,

More or less 10 hectares of the Wright Park are now covered by Certif\icates of Ancestral Land Titles 129 and 130 under 22 titles issued by the NCIP. Twenty five hectares of the Forbes Forest Reservation along South Drive that was esttablished  such  through Proclamation No. 10 of 1924 were titled under CALT Nos. 26, 27, 28 and 29. Likewise, more than 62 hectares of the Baguio Dairy Farm, another national government reservation established in 1940 under Proc. No. 603, were  also titled under CALT-37.

Other ancestral land claimants are seeking nullification of the titles issued over the dairy farm and the  Wright Park. On the controversial Green Valley area title, the mayor said this was expanded from a 4.50 hectare area  to 53 hectares and now overlaps other titles, including the lot on which the elementary school stands.

The latest, the mayor said, was the issuance of 22 titles over a total area of 7.8 hectares within the Busol Watershed, a major water source of the city and La Trinidad, Benguet and proclaimed as a government reservation in april, 1922.   The survey over the awarded area, the mayor said, was done last June, after which the transfer certificates of title were issued last June 24.

Curiously, the mayor said, the original title covering the area in the names of the heirs of Kalomis was invalidated. He added that the derivative titles over the same and in the names of applicants different from the Kalomis heirs were registered with the Registry of Deeds.

In a meeting with the mayor the other Wednesday afternoon, members of the Kalomis clan said they will file affidavits of adverse claim opposing the issuance of the 22 titles. The mayor also directed the city legal office to file the city’s affidavit of adverse claim.

The Wright Park titles are being opposed by relatives of the beneficiaries while the award at the Dairy Farm is also opposed by a clan different from the awardees.  “You can just imagine what Baguio would become if those parks and reservations are privately owned,” the mayor told the media. 

To avoid conflicts over contentious areas, the mayor reiterated activation of the Baguio Ancestral Land Clearing Committee , a body created by en banc resolution of the NCIP in 2009 and through which applications for ancestral land applications should pass before awards are approved and issued.

On a bigger scale, the NCIP, the Land Registration Authority, the DENR and the Department of Agrarian Reform said on Jan. 27, 2012 Joint Administrative Oder No. 01-12 “Clarifying, Restating and Inrerfacing the Respective Jurisdictions, Policies, Programs and Projects of (these agencies) in Order to Address Jurisdictional and Operational Issues Between and Among the Agencies”.

The joint AO was signed by DAR Secretary Virgilio de los Reyes, DENR Secretary Ramon Paje, then NCIP Chair Zenaida Brigida Pawid and LRA Administrator Eulalio Diaz III. At the TWG meeting Monday, mayor Domogan also submitted to the members documents on the contentious titles issued over the city’s parks and reservations, aside from the city’s opposition to the subdivision of lots bigger than the allowed 200 square meters and below for titling under the Free Patent Law.

The mayor and the city council said the practice of subdividing lots above 200 square meters and then titling these under the FPL process would have negative effects on the city’s population growth density which, at the present 4,300 plus per square kilometer, is already 17 times more than the national average.  At the TWG meeting, NCIP lawyer John Ray Libiran said the commission is willing to revisit the titles it had issued but that cases on these are pending in court. The TWG agreed to help petition the courts for the suspension of the hearing of cases to allow NCIP to review the titles it had issued.

The mayor suggested the filing of joint motion to defer the hearings, to which Jasmin replied the TWG will explore all legal remedies and recommend to the President ways to facilitate its work  “to review the environmental, commercial, tourism and law and order situation in Baguio and Boracay for the purpose of developing Comprehensive Plans to preserve these vital national assets”.

Given the land issues here, Jasmin admitted the work to develop a comprehensive plan for Baguio will be more difficult than preparing one for Boracay.