DESPITE FERNANDEZ’ INITIATIVE

Despite the new initiative by the Dagupan City government to recover the 30-hectare land it bought in barangay Awai, San Jacinto at an overprice of P16 million, the property might as well be considered lost forever.

The status of the land, which has already been placed under the administrative compulsory coverage of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), will unlikely change as the new initiative is deemed similar to one that was belatedly undertaken by the Lim administration.

 On March 3, 2004, the administration of then Mayor Benjamin Lim had petitioned that the property it bought from one Jose Mariano Cuña on April 11, 2002 be excluded from the coverage of CARP.

That was after the Department of Agrarian Reform Arbitration Board in Urdaneta decided on July 3, 2003 to place the property under administrative compulsory acquisition pursuant to the provision of Republic Act 6657 after it dismissed the petition for redemption filed by the tenants of the land.

The letter of Raul Laluan, Officer-in-Charge Provincial Agrarian Reform Officer (PARO), to Dagupan City Legal Officer George  Mejia dated October 5, 2007, described the latter’s letter dated  September 25, 2007 as “a reiteration of the letter sent us by the City Legal Office of the previous city administration”.

Nevertheless, Laluan said he will forward Mejia’s letter to the DAR regional office for further action. 

Mejia’s letter stemmed from the order of Mayor Alipio Fernandez Jr. directing him to first exhaust all remedies to recover the property before going to court against all those involved in the botched transaction.

Laluan claimed that the first letter of the city government was already answered, attaching in his letter (to Mejia)  the investigation report of Leonida Nebres, municipal agrarian reform officer of San  Jacinto dated December 5, 2005, stating that the property is qualified for being placed under compulsory acquisition by CARP.

Nebres had recommended the same to DARAB considering that the prospective farmer beneficiaries were already in peaceful possession and that justice to all concerned must be sub-served.

It is still capable of being placed under CARP although it is above 18 percent slope as the same was already developed with the planting of rice during the rainy season, and also tobacco, mango and other auxiliary crops in some of its portions, Nebres said.

Aside from this, the city evidently lost its appeal by default when the Dagupan City government failed to appeal the DARAB resolution dated July 3, 2003 with DARAB Manila, thus rendering the decision final and executory.

Additionally, Dagupan also did not avail of its right to retain from five to seven hectares of the property as owner of the land subjected to CARP.

Based on records, the land was already tenanted when it was still under the original owner, Juan Fernandez, and even when this was taken over by the property’s administrator, Estrella Sangalang, one of the heirs of the original owner.

It  was Sangalang  who sold the property to Cuna for P7 million on December 18, 2001 then in just less than four months, the same was sold to the Dagupan City government by Cuna  for P16 million.

The City Legal Office sent Cuña a letter via registered mail asking him to confirm if he knew that the land was tenanted when he sold the same to the Dagupan City government.

Mejia said the city has not received any reply from Cuña.—LM

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