Injustice now a national security risk?

For tonight’s special presentation on Straight from the Sky, we bring you a milestone in Cebu history as it is the 75th Anniversary of the Rotary Club of Cebu (Mother). With us tonight are the RC of Cebu’s pillars and top officers, Pres. John Domingo, Dr. Ibarra “Baba” Panopio, Atty. Eleuterio “Amay” Ong Vano who will give us a journey back in time about the 75 long year history that Rotary Club of Cebu has been around. Indeed most of us were not yet born when the Rotary Club of Cebu was created. Few civic organizations that I know can surpass this long years of history. So watch our fellow Rotarians tonight on SkyCable’s channel 15 at 8 p.m.

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I flew to Manila last Thursday to attend the Strategic Studies Group briefing at the Conference Room of the Department of National Defense which was chaired by Comm. Carlos L. Agustin (AFP Ret.) and co-chaired by Comm. Francisco L. Tolin (AFP Ret.) with USEC for Defense Affairs Antonio Santos Jr. The briefing was given by Ms. Christine June Cariòo, Head of the Institute for National Security Studies, who also briefed the group on the National Defense College. Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro, Jr. who invited me to this conference couldn’t make it to the meeting because he had to be in Davao City with the president.

I was the only one from Cebu who was invited to this conference, the rest came from Manila. But I did meet a few Manila-based Cebuanos, like Atty. Tony Oposa, the country’s foremost defender of the Environment and Atty. Manuel Faelnar of the Defenders of Indigenous Languages of the Archipelago and Dr. Gaudioso C. Sosmeòa Jr. (DILA). Also invited to that briefing were two eminent Professors, like Dean Froilan M. Bacungan and Dean Bartolome S. Carale. They told me that they read my column in The Philippine Star, which I took as a compliment.

The SSG is apparently composed of eminent academics and defense practitioners representing a wide range of expertise to significantly contribute to policy formulation in the DND. I didn’t realize the National Defense College also had an Institute for National Security Studies, that does into research and in-depth studies of particular problems our nation is facing.

Apparently the major thrust of the DND is not to find new or improved ways to fight wars, but to fight all the forces that lead or breed insurgency, terrorism, extremism and separatism. There were freewheeling thoughts and ideas thrown around in the conference room where we could speak to our hearts content on many issues or subjects that breeds discontent, hopelessness and eventually a total distrust of the government.

Many of the questions asked was whether a particular issue had become a national security risk. A case in point was what Dr. Segundo Romero said that the titling of land, through the Presidential Decree no. 1529 Property Registration Decree that already incorporates the Land Registration Act has become the source of anomalies. Thanks to corrupt members of the Judiciary, today even if you have a Torrens title to your land, it doesn’t give you any security that the land you own still belongs to you! Corruption is like a disease that has spread so fast. This problem become has now become so widespread, it is happening almost everywhere in this country.

I fully concurred with Dr. Romero’s observations because it is also happening here in Cebu where property owners whose lands were given to them by their grandparents often can no longer hold on to their Torrens title because a group of unscrupulous lawyers who are in cahoots with those so-called “rogues in robes” who find all the legal loopholes to rob you of your ancestral property. This is not only highway robbery; it is a super highway robbery, especially when unscrupulous judges are involved.

This has been happening to many properties in Mactan Island and in Cebu, I told the group that the most celebrated legal case was the issue of the Banilad Friar Estate where the Cebu Country Club was claimed by another person, but eventually no one won that case because the Supreme Court strangely awarded the CCC property to the national government, which was not a party of interest in this case.

Just a week ago, a judge in Toledo City was suspended for having too many “quickie” annulments. It came to a point that a woman told the press that she never even knew that her husband had annulled their marriage for a handsome fee of course! How many more such cases are fixed by judges or purposely delayed by clerks of courts for a fee I don’t know. But there seems to be a consensus within the SSG that injustice is now a major security risk because one-sided court decisions that often deprive the real owners of their ancestral land. These super highway robbers ought to be stopped immediately and those judges dismissed and disbarred forever!