Court junks Pateros claim to lucrative BGC

The Pateros municipal government is crying foul after a regional trial court junked its claim to the lucrative Bonifacio Global City (BGC) business district on the grounds that it failed to comply with well-defined procedures in settling territorial disputes between local governments.

Dominador Rosales, Pateros’ appointed representative in its claim to BGC, said the local government would elevate the matter to the Court of Appeals.

“The trial court’s decision is just wrong. We have exerted all efforts to comply with what the law says on settling territorial disputes. But these efforts collapsed,” Rosales, also a former Pateros councilor, told the Inquirer in an interview on Wednesday.

Rosales also claimed that the municipality was not informed of the court’s decision.

The Inquirer first reported on Pateros’ petition, which was filed in the Pasig Regional Trial Court Branch 271, located at Bicutan in Taguig, in May. The case, which was being heard by Presiding Judge Paz Esperanza Cortes, was based on a 2009 Supreme Court decision ordering Pateros, Taguig and Makati to settle their claim to BGC “amicably.”

The municipality’s petition named Makati and Taguig City as respondents and asked the court to declare it the local government unit which has jurisdiction over the disputed area. Pateros has been laying claim to the 461.56-hectare area currently under the jurisdiction of Taguig and the barangays of Cembo, South Cembo, West Rembo, East Rembo, Comembo, Pembo and Pitogo—with a total land area of 304.45 hectares—currently considered part of Makati City.

Going beyond its territorial claim, Pateros also asked the court to compel Taguig and Makati to return to it the revenues derived from the area since Makati took over the barangays in 1986 and Taguig took control of BGC in 1992.

However, after several hearings in 2012 and in 2013, the court issued a resolution on May 10, 2013, granting a pleading filed by Makati City to dismiss the case. Rosales said they learned about the resolution only on Sept. 30, 2013.

The 30-page resolution, a copy of which was obtained by the Inquirer, showed that the court junked Pateros’ petition after stressing that it failed to comply with the Local Government Code’s prescribed process in dealing with territorial disputes between cities and municipalities.

The court also said that the code “requires the municipality and the city to amicably settle the boundary dispute by a joint referral to the respective city and municipal councils of the parties and that in case no amicable settlement is reached, a certification should be issued to that effect by the councils concerned.

Pateros is hoping that the revenue from businesses in the disputed area would help raise its income and improve the standard of living of residents.