PNoy's unheralded gains

Many friends from the business community welcomed our piece on Justice Secretary Leila de Lima, agreeing that her decision to stay in the Cabinet was an important move which contributed significantly to the overall atmosphere of calm in the business and investment sectors.

Just this week, friends from the Filipino-Indian business community told us that our piece may have not highlighted enough one other important gain marked by the Justice Department which should be a credit to the administration of President Aquino.

We chanced upon these Filipino-Indian businessmen after a gathering of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce where Bureau of Immigration (BI) officer-in-charge Ronaldo Ledesma was the guest speaker. According to these members of the Filipino-India community, the expatriate sector is happy with developments in the immigration front. The reason is not only the clean up in the ranks of immigration agents and the aggressive operations against illegal aliens, but also the remarkable gains in the fight against human trafficking.

We were pleasantly surprised to know that the Philippines is being recognized for its decisive action against human trafficking which is now a major international concern. The global community is seriously worried that human trafficking is set to overtake drug trafficking as the number one scourge of humanity.

It appears the PNoy administration has done much during its first 100 days to send signals to the international community that the country is serious in its war against human trafficking.

De Lima has designated DOJ Undersecretary Jose Vicente Salazar to head the country’s Inter-agency Council Against Trafficking in Persons. According to Salazar, De Lima has ordered a no-nonsense hunt for human trafficking syndicates, and the new procedures at the immigration counters in the ports of entry and exit into the country have been a big help. The so-called S-queues have deprived criminal elements the option to choose which immigration officer to transact with. This has denied them the luxury of connivance.

The Secretary has also ordered more DOJ prosecutors on the job. Several cases have been filed against such syndicates and the DOJ boss is reportedly closely monitoring developments thus keeping her agents and prosecutors up on their toes.

But the other important work of the Council is to make sure that the PNoy administration’s war against human trafficking gets more than enough support from non-governmental and civic organizations, as well as from government and international agencies.

This is where the weight of De Lima’s stature and credibility comes in. Collaboration from other sectors in this war depends on how much they believe in the sincerity of the government’s efforts.

President Aquino appears to have achieved much in this war in his first 100 days, even if these are unheralded gains.

Old-fashioned crime-busting needed

There has been a rash of criticism all over the country against the slow processing and release of documents from registers of deeds which are all undergoing a computerization program that was first approved by the government way back in 1998.

It is easy to understand the frustration of property owners since the Land Registration Authority’s computerization was meant precisely to hasten transactions and boost the integrity of land titles in the country.

The trouble is, the implementing company, Land Registration Systems Inc., appears to be having problems funding the project’s hardware needs causing delays in the processing of documents. The hardware seems not to be enough to handle the volume of transactions at the agency.

To solve the problem, the LRA has allowed the company to begin collecting fees so that it could add or upgrade the hardware of the computerization which is being implemented under a build-operate-own system.

But now, there have been numerous reports of double images of documents on computer screens, encoded data disappearing from the system and even low-level employees being able to bypass the computer slots of superiors whose computers crashed.

Officials are now rightfully concerned at such reports and responsible registers of deeds now have to double check transactions, lest they later face legal sanctions for issuing documents that eventually prove to be spurious.

The fears are not far-fetched. Just last week, the Ombudsman filed charges against two officials of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources and the register of deeds in Cagayan for allegedly issuing fake land titles.

The LRA also had a similar horror story in Isabela in 2000 when lawmen raided the register of deeds at the capitol in Ilagan and found thousands of fake titles, official receipts, blank judicial forms and other land registration documents.

* * *

Besides, land grabbing syndicates now consist of well-educated criminals and their modi operandi have grown equally sophisticated.

In the controversial land case involving the Manotok Compound case in Quezon City, one of the parties claiming ownership of the property submitted as evidence a document that even had a watermark purportedly used by the US government.

The watermark was supposed to be that of the American eagle holding an olive branch in its right talon and 13 arrows in its left, a design defined by US law since 1782. But in the document that was submitted in court, the arrows were in the right talon and the olive branch in the other.

They also tried to assail the documents of the Manotok family by having an “expert” say that the papers could “not be as old as they purport to be” because they bore ink from ballpoint and sign pens that were not yet available when the documents were signed in the 1920s.

But the expert was referring to ink from the certification stamp of the Land Management Bureau (LMB) and was clearly marked “2-25-99”.

They also presented as evidence a land title and a tax declaration to prove their ownership, but the tax declaration covered a property that was located in another subdivision in a neighboring barangay.

Yet another piece of evidence was a notarized deed of sale over the property, but verification showed that the notarial records contained a document executed by another party concerning an unrelated transaction and not the supposed deed of sale.

* * *

Filipinos hear of land-grabbing epics so often that they have become indifferent to the slew of crimes that are committed by crooks in suits and barong. Almost all these stories involve the courts, the LRA, and the LMB, the two government agencies in charge of such transactions.

Generally, the LRA takes charge of lands that have already been titled while the LMB oversees transactions before the issuance of an original certificate of title.

The newly-installed leadership of these agencies should make it their prime mission to address these horror stories because their failure to do so will suggest their involvement even if they don’t have a clue what’s going on right under their noses.

Computerization and similar modernisms are fine and dandy, but here is a good, old-fashioned opportunity for the Aquino administration to translate its aspiration to eradicate corruption into tangible action that will surely earn brownie points with the President’s avowed boss, Juan dela Cruz.

For comments, e-mail at [email protected]