CALAPAN CITY, Oriental Mindoro – The owner of a vast landholding embracing the area of city hall and offices of some government agencies here maintained that its decision to fence the whole property is legal and seeks to prevent illegal settlers from entering.

GUINOBATAN property

Menakor Corp., through lawyer Olympia M. Calupitan, said illegal occupants have entered the 158-hectare prime property and illegally constructed houses and stores, prompting them to build a fence made of galvanized iron sheets and wooden posts.

Fencing started on March 27 and the activity was by a short-lived prayer-cum-protest action by affected residents and sympathizers.

Mayor Malou F. Morillo intervened by requesting the company to temporarily provide entry and exit spaces for dwellers. No violence and destruction of property were reported during and after the fencing.

Calupitan said the property was classified as an area within the residential, commercial, and industrial zone by the Sangguniang Bayan of Calapan through Resolution No. 139, Series of 1981, which was enacted on April 14, 1981 as Municipal Ordinance No. 21.

She said that the ordinance also declared the Guinobatan area as a non-agricultural or as light industrial zone.

On June 1998, the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law was enacted into law which mandated the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) to acquire private lands devoted to or suitable for agriculture and distribute to landless tenants.

One of these was the Guinobatan estate and a Certificate of Land Ownership Award was issued to the original tenants under the belief that the property is covered by the law.

On Oct. 21, 1998, the original owners of the land, Luis, Remegio, and Luz Luna, represented by Rhea Lubis, filed before the DAR Adjudication Board of Oriental Mindoro a petition for the cancellation of CLOAs anchored mainly on the reclassification of the land in question into a light intensity industrial zone that excluded it from the CARL.

The case reached the Office of the President that set aside the findings and conclusions of the DAR and declared that the area where subject property is situated was really intended to be classified, not as agricultural, and was declared as residential, commercial, and institutional in 1998.

But this was overturned by the Court of Appeals when it declared the whole area of Barangay Guinobatan as residential, commercial, and institutional areas and site of the new City Government Center for the City of Calapan and does not automatically convert the property into a non-agricultural land exempt from the coverage of the agrarian law.

In 2013, the Supreme Court finally settled the issues involved by ruling that the property is exempted from the coverage of CARL.

The SC also ruled that the CLOAs were “irregularly issued” and did not bind the owner to honor the earlier findings of the DAR.

Calupitan said that on Dec. 20, 2023, the Municipal Trial Court in Cities based in Calapan treated the issue as an accion publiciana or recovery of right of possession, issued a writ of execution against 66 occupants to finally vacate the property, removed the improvements, and restored lawful possession to Menakor.