BAGUIO CITY—The National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) and other groups have filed separate petitions for reconsideration of a Supreme Court ruling in 2019 that said certificates of ancestral land title (CALTs) could not be issued in Baguio as prescribed by the indigenous rights law.
One of the petitioners was a company which described itself as a “buyer in good faith,” lawyer Marlon Bosantog, NCIP director for legal affairs, said on Thursday during an ancestral land summit attended by Ibaloys whose titles and ancestral land applications are “currently in limbo.”
The Supreme Court decision nullified the CALTs issued to the heirs of Josephine Abanag and Cosen Piraso that encroached into a portion of the presidential Mansion, Wright Park and the city’s oldest hotel, citing Baguio’s exemption from the ancestral land provisions of the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act of 1987 (Republic Act No. 8371).
The tribunal concluded that Section 78 of the law grants Baguio full authority to govern all lands under the city’s townsite reservation, and the “NCIP cannot transgress this clear legislative intent.”
The summit was convened by the city council, which is drafting a policy that would protect Ibaloys, following complaints of discrimination when CALT holders were refused building and business permits.
Various city offices and regulators treat CALT and the city’s only Ibaloy domain title as inferior to conventional land patents.
Demolition orders
At the summit, Ibaloy landholders complained that they were issued demolition orders by the city government for not having secured building permits for houses or buildings they put up on titled ancestral lands.
Bosantog cited a previous Supreme Court decision which said an ancestral land title was the same as a TCT (transfer certificate of title or the common land title).
If a TCT is a valid basis for the issuance of a building permit, there is no reason a CALT or a certificate of ancestral domain title (CADT) should not be given the same privilege, the court said.But the national building code is silent on indigenous people’s land instruments. The city government recognizes a CALT, according to a 2014 administrative order, provided this does not encroach into watersheds and titled properties, according to planning officer Evelyn Cayat.
Transparency
For transparency, Ibaloy families are asked what they intend to do with their ancestral lands, “particularly when these are within forests,” said Councilor Isabelo Cosalan, an Ibaloy who convened the summit.
He said the “sustainable development, protection and management plans” for Ibaloy lands could be included in the city’s land use plan now being reviewed by the council.“Unless the court reverses itself … I think we are in a state of paralysis,” Bosantog said.
The city government sought the invalidation of the CALTs issued in 2010 to Abanag, Piraso and the heirs of Mercedes Tabon and Lauro Carantes because they had been selling land to non-Ibaloys which, it noted, was against the spirit of the law.