THE CASE OF THE BANILAD FRIARS' ESTATE IN CEBU
INSIDE CEBU, MAY 5, 2008 (STAR) INSIDE CEBU By Bobit S. Avila - Last Thursday, thanks to the article by Perseus Echeminada entitled “Driver’s licenses fading, peeling off” I checked my driver’s license inside my wallet and lo and behold, my photograph peeled off and was imprinted on the plastic window of my wallet. I also asked my brother to look into his license and the same thing happened. So now if I get apprehended for a traffic violation, I will have to surrender my whole wallet, which might be misunderstood as bribing the traffic cop!In this day and age of high-tech, high-quality credit cards or bank debit cards that one can get in a mere 30 minutes, it is only proper for Land Transportation Office (LTO) Chief Albert Suansing to review its contract with AMPI Mega Data, as motorists are given cheap licenses for the money they paid for it. We ought to get a refund for the cheap licenses we got!
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On Jan. 21, 2002 the Supreme Court ruled on the case of the Francisco Alonso vs the Cebu Country Club (CCC) property lot No. 727 D-2 citing that the claimant wasn’t able to prove that CCC procured the property through fraud. Therefore that should have been enough for the country club to win its land case. But it was not to be. In what I believe is the strangest decision that I have ever heard or read, the Supreme Court made a ruling denying Alonso’s claim to the land, but due to a legal infirmity… the lack of the signature of the Secretary of the Interior. The SC awarded the property to the government… even if the government wasn’t a party to this legal case.
That SC decision sent shivers not only to the country club members, but also to all the landowners inside the so-called “Banilad Friars’ Estate” and all the other friar lands in the rest of the country. The Banilad Friars’ Estate comprises some 19.29 million square meters of land from as far as downtown Cebu City, the Ayala Shopping Center, the Asiatown IT Park and all the way to the Marco Polo Hotel and Gaisano Country Mall… including the Cebu Provincial Capitol, plus the remaining properties still belonging to the Cebu Archdiocese and those of hundreds of thousands of homeowners.
To solve the problem, Rep. Raul del Mar (Cebu City North) sponsored a law, which was signed on May 9, 2007 as Republic Act 9443, in order to “remove the cloud of doubt” as to whether the sale of properties within the Banilad Friars’ Estate even without the signature of the Secretary of the Interior was considered valid. This was one law that truly gave the landowners a relief. But that was no relief to the country club as the Office of the Solicitor General had taken steps to recover the property.
However, last week, Solicitor General Agnes Devanadera and her team came to Cebu and when this question was brought before her, she pointed out that her office was no longer interested to pursue this case because the government “was divested of its interests in the friar lands and the OSG is convinced that the SC ruling has ceased to have any practical effect.” What many legal luminaries also found strange in that SC ruling was that when it gave the government the CCC property, it did not nullify or cancel the CCC’s title the way it should be when someone loses his property.
Actually, Solicitor General Devanadera merely put words into her actions when her office no longer pursued this case during a hearing last February. So what’s left for the Cebu Country Club’s lawyers to do is to permanently “legalize” their title and then we can say that this case is over.
Now that we’re finished with all the facts, allow me to point out that the CCC case has spurred many rumors that the so-called “Chinese Mafia,” which openly buys properties in litigation and “buys” corrupt judges, was also involved in this controversial case… hence the controversial SC ruling? I’m sure that we will never get into the bottom of this, but here in Cebu, it is common knowledge that the “Chinese Mafia” continues to operate, winning many legal cases because of their connections within the judiciary.
This is how far corruption has become deeply rooted in this country. A week ago, the Carcar City police figured in a shootout with two bank robbers who were gunned down. We congratulated the Philippine National Police (PNP) for their success… but the truth is, only the petty criminals have been caught, shot or killed. But the truly big criminals are those who buy land cases (for instance, someone just won a property in front of the runway of the Mactan Cebu International Airport) and win them in the lower courts, so government agencies have to spend millions in taxpayers’ money to give to spurious landowners (yes, the landowners are only landowners in name) courtesy of those so-called “hoodlums in robes”!
Chief News Editor: Sol Jose Vanzi
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