Ancestral land title holders evicting gov’t offices in Baguio

The Mansion. EV ESPIRITU/ INQUIRER NORTHERN LUZON

BAGUIO CITY—Government agencies at a compound of the presidential Mansion here have been issued eviction notices by one of the purported buyers of a titled ancestral land occupying portions of the President’s summer home and the city’s Wright Park.

The eviction letters from a Baguio businesswoman were issued last week to the Philippine Information Agency and the People’s Television Network (PTV 4), both overseen by the Presidential Communications Operations Office.

The notices, signed by the businesswoman’s lawyer, Jose Olarte Jr., demanded that the Cordillera offices of these agencies demolish a PTV 4 station being built there because it encroached on his client’s property.

These agencies operate at the former Cordillera House, a portion of the Mansion reservation included in a certificate of ancestral land title (CALT) issued by the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) to the heirs of Josephine Abanag and Mercedes Tabon in 2010.

Republic Act No. 8371, or the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act of 1997 (Ipra), grants CALTs to indigenous Filipinos who have ties to these properties since “time immemorial” and allows the transfer of these properties to members of the same indigenous community or a family member, “subject to customary laws and traditions of the community concerned.”

The Baguio City government has petitioned to nullify Abanag’s CALT and the four CALTs of other Baguio-Ibaloy families, saying these documents were issued erroneously.

Baguio City Mayor Mauricio Domogan said these lands trespassed into forests, parks and Casa Vallejo, Baguio’s oldest hotel.

The Abanag CALT covers Wright Park but its status was being reviewed by NCIP commissioners.

Documents, however, showed that the Abanag title was recorded as a private title by the Baguio Register of Deeds in 2013 and that 1,034 square meters of the property had been sold to Olarte’s client.

Olarte also sought out Norma Bustarde, chief of Barangay Lualhati, which covers the Mansion, requesting her, in a Nov. 11 letter, to mediate this dispute with government agencies.

Bustarde said the first mediation session took place on Monday but no settlement was reached.

She said she had referred the matter to Domogan. “We have been receiving several guests in the village for months now, many of them claiming to have bought a portion of the [CALT] and seeking our endorsement so they could develop their new property [inside the park],” Bustarde said.

Although the sale of CALTs to people not part of the title holder’s family or tribe has outraged authorities, the eviction notice appeared to be the first evidence that these transactions had taken place.

A former NCIP official said land speculators had been emboldened by a provision in Section 8 of the Ipra, which allows CALT holders to redeem their land in property deals within 15 days if these real property transactions were “tainted by the vitiated consent of the [indigenous cultural community] or [are] transferred for an unconscionable consideration or price.”

In an August 2014 opinion sent to Commissioner Antonio Bernardo, chief executive officer of the Housing and Land Use Regulatory Board, Justice Secretary Leila de Lima said the Ipra allowed ancestral lands to be sold to buyers not part of indigenous communities if these were registered as private titles. Vincent Cabreza, Inquirer Northern Luzon