CARP beneficiaries fighting eviction jailed

THE ARRESTED farmers in a police vehicle as they are brought to a detention cell in the City of San Fernando, Pampanga province. TONETTE OREJAS/INQUIRER CENTRAL LUZON

CITY OF SAN FERNANDO—Police on Wednesday detained for several hours five farmers who fought the demolition of structures in a 130-hectare agrarian reform area in Barangay Maimpis here that a Malacañang order declared to be nonagricultural, paving the way for its sale to a mining company.

The property is also being claimed by a former official of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR).

Farmers Joewer Serrano, 52; Rafael Manalo, 67; June Jacinto, 44; Alfredo Manarang, 50, and Noel Manalo, 50, were detained at the Pampanga provincial jail. They face charges of obstruction of justice for blocking the demolition ordered by a local court.
They were released on the same day.

At least 100 antiriot policemen prevented tension from escalating between the farmers and their families, and security guards and the demolition crew of mining firm Zam-Bat Mining Corp.
Reynaldo Marzan, a leader of the farmers, said the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) placed the property under agrarian reform in 2004 and issued certificates of land ownership award (CLOAs) to the farmers in 2005.

Lawyer Dante Ilaya, counsel of the farmers, said Eligio Mallari, lawyer and CHR commissioner at that time, got an exemption order from the Office of the President under then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo by claiming that the land had become nonagricultural.

In 2008, then Agrarian Reform Secretary Nasser Pangandaman exempted the land from Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) coverage. In March 2011, incumbent Agrarian Reform Virgilio de los Reyes canceled the farmers’ CLOAs. In both instances, the farmers were not notified.

Marzan said the farmers used to be tenants of Roberto Wijangco. The Philippine National Bank (PNB) foreclosed the property in the 1980s and Mallari offered to buy the land.
PNB later canceled the land deal with Mallari after the lawyer failed to complete payments. This allowed the DAR to place the property under the CARP.

Records showed that the Land Bank of the Philippines had been issuing certificates of full payment and release of real estate mortgage to 15 farmers since 2005. The rest of the farmers are still amortizing their lots.

Romeo Dizon, barangay chair of Maimpis, said farmers were suddenly informed last month that the lot had been sold by Mallari to Zam-Bat Mining Corp. in 2012.

“At least 65 percent of our 9,000 constituents in the village live on farming sugarcane and rice on that property. They also live in their farms. It is my belief that our people own those lots because they have been paying for those at Land Bank. They have been tenants for a long, long time,” Dizon said.

Sheriff Angelito Domingo was tasked by the Regional Trial Court Branch 42 in Pampanga with serving the eviction notice to the farmers. The court issued a demolition order on June 4.
Neither Mallari, who is in his 80s now, nor a representative of the mining company was at the site when the demolition order was enforced.

Ilaya said the eviction order should not have been served because he questioned Mallari’s ownership in a case still pending at a Quezon City court.

The farmers were also shown a copy of a Court of Appeals resolution upholding PNB’s ownership of the Maimpis property.