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Thursday, June 15, 2006
Adanza denies harassing 'tenants'
By Maricar Aranas
PROVINCIAL Board Member Marcelo Adanza denied hiring goons to harass two families who claimed to be tenants of his family rice farm in Sitio Catubahan, Barangay Mayabon, Zamboanguita town.
The two families, represented by alleged tenant Epifania Orias, 39, went to the Provincial Attorney's Office middle of last week complaining that Adanza, former mayor of Zamboanguita, had been harassing her to force her family out of the land she claimed to have been tilling since 1985.
Orias said the latest harassment happened on June 2 when seven men arrived in the farm on board a municipal truck marked “Libreng Sakay,” fenced the lot she was tilling, and allegedly fired their firearms without hitting her when she tried to photograph them destroying the earth wall of the rice field.
But Adanza, in a press conference in his office over the weekend, denied that his father Gerardo had authorized Orias and another farmer, Aurelia Danag, 35, to work the rice farm in 1985 up to the present.
Adanza said at that time his father had already turned over the tenancy of the four-hectare rice field to one Asteria Lazaga and her husband.
Moreover, the board member said, Orias's name was not included in the records of the Department of Land Reform as their tenant.
He said his father had even complained against Orias before the barangay captain of Mayabon for tilling the land without permission.
The former mayor also denied Orias's allegation that the property was public land because it was titled in his father's name and that his family could not let the four-hectare property be taken from them because they have already lost 27 hectares to the agrarian reform program.
Adanza accused opposition municipal councilor Teresita Eltanal and Flora Baldado of exploiting the issue.
During the press conference, Adanza presented his alleged tenant Asteria Lazaga, Orias's younger sister, who said no one fired at Orias last June 2.
She said Adanza sent the seven men who arrived on board the municipal truck to fence off the lot tenanted by Orias after the latter refused to turn it over to the Adanza family.
Lazaga further claimed that her sister and her family arrived from Mindanao in 1985 and that because she allowed them to till a portion of the rice field to help them.
But later, she said, her sister took over a lot and started tilling it allegedly without permission from Adanza's father.
(June 15, 2006 issue)
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