Land title system under assault: Who'll defend it?

President, Chamber of Real Estate and Builders Association (CREBA)

The Torrens system of land titles and deeds registration is under a continuing assault by landgrab-bers. A land title no longer inspires confidence which it used, and ought, to have. Usually, a careful purchaser of title undertakes a research into its very source, the so-called "mother title", and laboriously probes into the series of transactions and transfers, before he parts with dear money. Otherwise, in the absence of a land title insurance in this country, he takes it at his own peril.

This is according to some landowners, businessmen, bankers, and homeowners, who speak from experience. They have been cheated of their land parcels or are in danger of losing precious property to land-grabbers. Thanks to corrupt judges ordering equally corrupt registry of deeds factotums to issue land titles, never mind if these overlap previous titles – it’s all in the performance of their "ministerial duty." Thanks, too, to lawyers whose hearts bleed for the landless "poor", whose practice avails of powerful connections, and whose competent but shrewd, service deserves a hearty share in the loot. The irregularities is to discourage the flow of local and foreign investments into the country’s business and commercial sectors. Thus, land-grabbers, with their cohorts, are economic saboteurs.

Large-scale illegal and dubious land titling activities, for instance, like those documented four years ago by the Senate of the Philippines and the Department of Justice in the Maysilo Estate titling cases, no longer shock the sensibilities of citizens or compel concerned government agencies to act in defense of the integrity of the system.

As the Department of Justice report in 1997 on the Maysilo Estate scandal reveals, the national government itself has been defrauded or stands to be defrauded. For instance, despite its legitimate title issued more than four decades ago, the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System lost its huge compound in Caloocan City to a claimant some 10 years ago. The claimant’s title came from titles found fraudulent by the DOJ and the Senate of the Philippines. For some unexplained reason, the MWSS management appeared not interested in getting back its property until the Office of the Government Corporate Counsel headed by a new counsel formally recently appealed to the Supreme Court to review its "erroneous" decision. But, for some unexplained reasons, a little more than a month after, the counsel was yanked out of his position as if to stop the OGCC action.

The DOJ report on the Maysilo Estate titling irregularities disclosed that if the claimants to the disputed Caloocan City lands now in the names of present owners, succeed in ousting them, the government exposes itself to scores of court suits by the vendees in sales contracts executed by it or entered into in his behalf by the National Housing Authority. Affected by the fake titles of the land-grabbers, among others, are portions of the North Diversion Highway, the EDSA, and the site of the Bonifacio Monument in Caloocan City. In other parts of the country, even forest reservations, shores, and other land and water resources are being grabbed by syndicates.

A few years back, the Land Registration Authority took the first serious effort at protecting the integrity of the land titling system. After getting the clearance of the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) and its Build-Operate-Transfer and Cabinet committees, the LRA conducted a public bidding for a land titling computerization project and finally awarded the BOT contract to a private proponent. In fact, a few months ago, the project was completing its pilot project phase when higher authorities decided to sidetrack the title computerization project. The private contractor had already spent a huge amount which LRA would have to pay back to it. According to a report, the NEDA now wants a combined computerization project for three government agencies, one of them being the LRA. What appears puzzling is that while the LRA project has been stopped, up to this time, there has been no official announcement, much less any plausible reasons given for the government’s costly change of mind at midstream.

This development, we hope, is not the result of any deliberate effort to derail the LRA titling computerization program which aims precisely to clean up the present titling operation at the registries of deeds whose vaults have been the target of "saksak-bunot" operations of syndicates.

The situation should really force the national government to mount a no-nonsence campaign against "title banditry." Only decisive action and results will restore public respect for and confidence in land titles.