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Wednesday, September 28, 2005
SC rules v. home for elderly
The High Tribunal has ruled in favor of the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) on whether the agency has the authority to redistribute land belonging to religious and charitable institutions.
The Supreme Court (SC) Third Division ruled that the government’s agrarian reform program has more weight than “an obscure special law” disallowing institutions from selling donated properties.
The program was implemented through Republic Act (RA) 6657 and the old land reform law under Presidential Decree (PD) 27.
Promulgated last Sept. 23, the SC resolution resolved the petition for review raised by the management of Hospicio de San Jose, a home for the elderly in Barili, Cebu.
The petition asked the SC to stop the implementation of a DAR order dated Oct. 10, 1987, placing two parcels of land belonging to the Hospicio under DAR’s Operation Land Transfer and distributing them to 22 farmer-families registered as tillers of the property based on PD 27.
Special law
The petition cited a special law, Act No. 3239, which states that the land donated to Hospicio shall not be sold.
The SC said land transfers in the land reform program are not considered as conventional sale.
“The rationale for holding that the properties of the Hospicio are covered by PD 27 and RA 6657 is so well-grounded in law,” the ruling stated.
And since the legislature had already established what should be the priority, the issue has resolved itself, said the resolution signed by Associate Justice Dante Tinga.
The resolution described the legislature as the body that had “unquestionable discretion in assigning hierarchical values” on how social justice may be implemented.
“By refusing to exempt properties owned by charitable institutions or maintained for charitable purposes from agrarian reform, the legislature has indicated a policy choice which the Court is bound to implement,” the SC ruled.
Indigents
The home for the elderly won’t be displaced as a result of the ruling, but the Hospicio’s vast land holdings will now be at risk of being distributed through the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program.
The Hospicio was created as a corporate body in 1925 by Act No. 3239.
The law was enacted to formally accept the offer made by Pedro and Benigna Cui to establish a home for the care and support, free of charge, “of indigent invalids and incapacitated and helpless persons.”
It was to be maintained with the revenues of the personal and real properties to be endowed by the Cuis and other donors to it.
Section 4 of Act No. 3239 provides that “the personal and real property donated to the (Hospicio) by its founders or by other persons shall not be sold under any consideration.”
Citing this, the Hospicio filed a motion for the reconsideration of the 1987 DAR order with the Office of the Agrarian Reform Secretary, where it argued that Act No. 3239 has never been repealed.
The DAR rejected the motion by ruling that PD 27, the law upon which the 1987 order was based, covered all rice and corn lands and provides no exemptions based on the manner of acquisition of the land by the landowner.
Review
The Hospicio management contested the DAR ruling though a petition for review with the Court of Appeals, which later ruled in the government’s favor.
The Hospicio elevated the matter to the SC through the recent petition for review, this time saying the forced disposition of the Hospicio’s landholdings will “incapacitate the discharge of its charitable functions, which equally promote social justice and the upliftment of the lives of the less fortunate.”
The petition also said they are among those that should be spared from the government’s agrarian reform program.
But the High Tribunal wasn’t swayed.
“(The provision) does not include properties which are generally used for charitable purposes, such as orphanages, from the exemption. Not even all properties owned by religious institutions are exempt, save for those places of worship,” read the resolution signed by Tinga.
Besides, the ruling maintains, Section 4 of Act No. 3239 only prohibits the conventional sale of the lands donated to the hospicio, while land transfers mandated under PD 27 and RA 6657 cannot be considered a conventional sale under civil laws. (KNR)
(September 28, 2005 issue)
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