Palace confident retired generals will leave Boni land

Malacañang assured the public that there will be no problem in the implementation of the Supreme Court (SC) decision evicting retired and active military officers and their families that are claiming a parcel of land inside Fort Bonifacio in Taguig City, which was declared as a military reservation.

Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita said the SC had already made a decision on the long-running issue and the retired military generals are "professionals and honorable enough that they would abide by the ruling of the highest court in the land."

"They (officers) can still make an appeal but I believe they are responsible enough to abide by the High Court’s decision," said Ermita, who is also a retired military general.

He said he does not expect any violence would disrupt the departure of the retired officials and their families from the property similar to what happened in previous forced evictions in other areas of Fort Bonifacio.

The SC ruled against the families of soldiers and has declared that 39.9 hectares of contested land at Fort Bonifacio are part of a military reservation and cannot be purchased by private corporations or individuals.

In a 24-page decision penned by Associate Justice Cancio Garcia, the SC’s second division also ordered the military officers, their families and members of the Southside Homeowners Association Inc. (SHAI) who are currently occupying the land, to vacate the property that is part of the Fort Andres Bonifacio Military Reservation.

The SC granted the petition for review, filed by the government seeking to nullify and set aside the Jan. 28, 2003 ruling of the Court of Appeals (CA) which affirmed the dismissal by the Pasig City regional trial court (RTC) Branch 71 of the government’s complaint to nullify and cancel the land titles presented by the SHAI.

Ermita, however, did not comment on reports that Ambassador Benjamin Defensor, chairman of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Counter-Terrorism Task Force, and Interior Undersecretary Melchor Rosales were among the retired generals who had opposed the eviction from their quarters at Fort Bonifacio.

Defensor, a former Armed Forces chief, said he will abide with the SC decision since it was pursuant to the objectives of the SHAI that are to let active junior military officers occupy the property, not retired generals.

"I have not read the full text of the decision but that was exactly what SHAI has been fighting for in the beginning," Defensor told The STAR.

Defensor hopes that the decision will be implemented according to the SC’s true intent and not like what happened with the missing Armed Forces modernization funds. He was referring to the billions of pesos worth of proceeds of the sale of other parcels of land inside Fort Bonifacio.

He said SHAI, a non-stock corporation formed by wives of military officers, wanted to make sure that the property would be used for housing of junior officers.

The SHAI was able to secure from the registry of deeds of the province of Rizal a title, TCT 1508, in its name to the bulk of, if not the entire JUSMAG area.

On Oct. 30, 1991, the Rizal registry issued TCT no. 1508 on the basis of a notarized deed of sale purportedly executed on the same date by then Director Abelardo G. Palad Jr., of the Lands Management Bureau in favor of the Southside Homeowners.

The total purchase price as written in the coverage deed was P11,997,660 at P30 per square meter.

The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) conducted an investigation on the alleged land scams at the Fort Andres Bonifacio Military Reservation, including the Oct. 30, 1991 deed of sale of the Southside.

President Ramos ordered on Oct. 16, 1993, through memorandum order no. 173, the Office of the Solicitor General to institute action towards the cancellation of TCT no. 1508 and the title acquired by the Navy Officer’s Village Association (NOVA) over a bigger parcel within the Fort Andres Bonifacio Military Reservation.

A month after, the OSG, on behalf of the government, filed with the Pasig RTC the corresponding nullification and cancellation of title suit against the Southside Homeowners, citing in their complaint that "the conveying deed is spurious as the purported signature thereon of Palad is a forgery; there are no records with the Land Management Bureau of the application to purchase and the alleged payment of the purchase price and the property in question is inalienable, being part of a military reservation established under Proclamation no. 423."

During the trial of the case, Palad denied that he was the one who signed the deed of sale.

In its decision dated Oct. 7, 1997, the Pasig RTC, however, ruled in favor of the SHAI saying that the parcels of land covered by the deed in question are no longer part of the Fort Bonifacio Military Reservation.

The government filed an appeal before the CA, but the CA affirmed the Pasig RTC’s ruling in toto in its Jan. 28, 2003 ruling.

In ruling in favor of the government, the Supreme Court said the government was able to prove that the subject property is "inalienable" land and cannot be purchased by private individuals or corporations.

"Consistent with the foregoing postulates, jurisprudence teaches that a military reservation, like the Fort Andres Bonifacio Military Reservation, or a part thereof is not open to private appropriation or disposition and, therefore, not registrable, unless it is in the meantime, reclassified and declared as disposable and alienable public land. And until a given parcel of land is released from its classification as part of the military reservation zone and reclassified by law or by presidential proclamation a disposable and alienable, its status as part of a military reservation remains, even if incidentally it is devoted for a purpose other than as a military camp or for defense. So it must be there," the SC said.