CA exempts Sariaya estate from CARP; nullifies Cloas of 255 land beneficiaries

SARIAYA, Quezon—Some 255 agrarian reform beneficiaries in this town were dispossessed of their lands after the Court of Appeals (CA) granted the petition of landowners to exempt their estate from the government’s Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP).

Romeo Clavo, president of Ugnayan ng Magsasaka sa Gitnang Quezon (Ugnayan), said they received last week a copy of the CA decision, dated May 29, which nullified the certificates of land ownership award (Cloas) granted to 255 beneficiaries covering 295.9 hectares of land in Barangays (villages) Concepcion I, Pinagbakuran and Manggalang Kiling.

The ruling was penned by CA 9th Division chair Associate Justice Isaias Dicdican and concurred by Associate Justices Victoria Isabel Paredes and Melchor Quirino Sadang. A scanned copy of the ruling was e-mailed to the Inquirer on Friday by Clavo.

The CA ruling was in response to the appeal of the landowners represented by the heirs of Emiliano Gala who filed the petition in 1998 seeking to reclaim the family estate that had been distributed to land reform beneficiaries.

“We’ve already won the case at the CA. But all of a sudden, the CA justices themselves changed their mind and cast aside their earlier decision that favors us,” Clavo said in an interview here on Friday.

Clavo referred to the March 11, 2015 decision of the same CA division that sided with the opinion of Malacañang, which, on May 12, 2014, affirmed the 2009 ruling by then Agrarian Reform Secretary Nasser Pangandaman rejecting the Gala family’s appeal for exemption from CARP.

Dicdican, in his March 11 decision, even said that Malacañang and the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) “acted correctly and in accordance with law” in rejecting the landowners’ motion for reconsideration.

“It is settled that factual findings of administrative agencies are generally accorded respect and even finality by this Secretary of DAR, who, by reason of his official position has acquired expertise in specific matters within his jurisdiction, deserve full respect and, without justifiable reason, ought not to be altered, modified and reversed,” Dicdican said in his March 11 decision, a scanned copy of which was also furnished the Inquirer by Clavo.

But Dicdican, acting on the motion for reconsideration filed by the Gala family, reversed on May 22, 2015 his earlier ruling, saying there was a prima facie merit in the appeal.

On May 29, the CA division issued a ruling that finally granted the appeal of the landowners to exempt their estate from CARP, noting that the Gala estate was classified as nonagricultural under the 1982 zoning ordinance of the municipal government of Sariaya, or six years before CARP took effect.

The CA cited a Supreme Court decision which said that lands already classified as nonagricultural before CARP took effect on June 15, 1988 are outside the coverage of land reform. It also cited a similar case in Sariaya where the landowners were allowed by   DAR and Malacañang to reclaim their lands based on the 1982 zoning ordinance.

The CA also rejected the DAR argument that the 295 hectares were already issued Cloas and could no longer be exempted from CARP. It cited Opinion No. 44 of the Department of Justice in 1990, which said that “erroneous granting of Cloa for lands outside the coverage of CARP should be reconveyed to the owners of said lands.”

Clavo said the affected Cloa holders would challenge the CA decision before the Supreme Court.

“The case is a matter of life and death for land reform beneficiaries. The CA has to explain its questionable decision that they arrived at in a very suspicious haste,” he said.

According to Clavo, hundreds of other land reform beneficiaries in Sariaya had also suffered the same fate due to the 1982 zoning law.

Clavo once more appealed to the local government to scrap the controversial ordinance for the sake of thousands of local farmers and their families.