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Sunday, September 11, 2005
Farmers fight for farmlands
A GROUP of farmers from Toledo City have asked the Supreme Court (SC) to reconsider an earlier order that cancels the award of farmlands to them under the government agrarian reform program.
Assisted by lawyer Rex Fernandez, the farmers said the SC ruled without giving them the chance to refute the claims of landowner Pureza Herrera, made through her heirs, that the certificates of land ownership award (Cloa) given to them were invalid.
The Herrera heirs had sued the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) for issuing the Cloa to the farmers even though the land was not used for farming but as pasture for raising livestock and is, therefore, outside the coverage of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law.
Basis
The High Tribunal, in a 27-page decision penned by Associate Justice Romeo Callejo Sr., and handed down last July, ruled against the DAR.
Used as basis in Callejo’s ruling is the Court of Appeals (CA) decision of June 29, 2001 that said the DAR jumped the gun by issuing the Cloa despite a pending petition for the deferment of the placement of the property under agrarian redistribution.
According to Callejo’s ruling, the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (Carp), when it was passed into law in 1988, used to include private agricultural farms devoted to commercial livestock, poultry and swine.
Void
However, after the High Tribunal’s ruling in the Dec. 4, 1990 Luz Farms vs. the Secretary of the Department of Agrarian Reform, the provision was declared void.
The farmers, numbering 72, said the High Tribunal erred in ruling to cancel their award because the land in question is agricultural.
They have also asked the court to allow them to intervene in the case so that they, being the tenants of the land even before Carp became a law, can testify to how the land was actually used before.
According to Fernandez, the SC’s ruling cannot even be deemed binding if it does not implead the farmers because they are the “indispensable party” to the proceeding.
“This is a matter of petitioner’s right to due process. They who have been tilling the land for a long time should have been given the right to contravene the allegations of the private respondents for they were the ones who were there and know whether the said land was really devoted to livestock,” he said.
The farmers said the High Tribunal erred in giving wide acceptance to the previous ruling of the Court of Appeals that described the Herrera heirs as having “adduced substantial evidence” that the property was indeed devoted to livestock, poultry and swine raising.
More weight
The High Tribunal, they said, should have given more weight to the official findings of the Land Bank of the Philippines, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, the Municipal Agrarian Reform Officer in Toledo City, the Agrarian Reform Regional Office of Central Visayas and the DAR central office, all of which found basis to facilitate the award.
“The High Court, in a long line of jurisprudence, always states that factual findings of administrative agencies are to be accorded not only respect but even finality when they are supported by substantial evidence,” they stressed.
The farmers have been holding on to their Cloa since it was issued on Jan. 18, 1996. They cover 101.429 hectares of property. (KNR)
(September 11, 2005 issue)
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