The Boracay land reform fiasco
The Boracay land reform fiasco
ON Nov. 8, 2018, then-president Rodrigo Duterte personally distributed certificates of land ownership award (CLOAs) to 44 families of the Ati indigenous cultural community in Barangay Manoc-Manoc, Boracay, Aklan. Duterte reminded the recipients that they had to wait at least 10 years before they could mortgage or sell the land. "In the meantime, till the land, make it productive, and when the prohibition period is over, maybe your children can sell it, and it would be million[s of pesos]," the president said in his message (GMA, Nov. 8, 2018). "We join the Ati tribe ... in thanking the president for this gift. It is but fitting to cap the first phase of the island's rehab with the awarding of CLOAs that secure ownership of their land," then-environment secretary Roy Cimatu was quoted as saying (press release, DENR website). The Ati community members' lives as farmer-beneficiaries, however, were to be short-lived. There was no "secure ownership" of the land.
"The first phase of the island's rehab" was the Duterte administration's abrupt closure of Boracay from April to October 2018 to clean up what the president had called a "cesspool." "I-land reform ko na 'yan," Mr. Duterte was quoted as saying on April 9, 2018. "I am declaring land reform in the entire island of Boracay," he reiterated weeks later (Philippine Star, May 31, 2018). Presidential Proclamation 1064 of 2006, which classified the island's land area into forest lands and land for agricultural purposes, was used as the legal basis for placing the country's No. 1 tourist destination under the agrarian reform program.
The president scoffed at the point raised by some critics that Boracay's soil was unsuitable for agricultural production: "It's the problem of the Department of Agriculture," Mr. Duterte said, adding that Boracay was "never meant to be a commercial and residential [area]" (Philippine Daily Inquirer, June 21, 2018).
Five months after the president, environment secretary Cimatu and agrarian reform secretary John Castriciones distributed the CLOAs, Digna Elizabeth Ventura filed a protest with the Department of Agrarian Reform Western Visayas against the inclusion of 1,282 square meters owned by her company. DAR told Ventura to produce a soil analysis to prove the soil's unsuitability for farming, a ground for exclusion. The DA's Bureau of Soil and Water Management found that the aforementioned property and the properties of three other companies that protested the agrarian reform coverage were indeed not suitable for agriculture. With this, DAR Western Visayas ruled in favor of the complainants and directed them to request the DAR secretary to cancel the CLOAs.
The CLOAs were canceled with finality last March 5. According to DAR, the inclusion of the properties under the land reform program was erroneous as land not suitable for agricultural production isn't subject to coverage.
The Ati families were not farmers or farm workers in 2018. They were not asking for land to till. When Duterte announced that he would give them land, they accepted and promised to do their best to make the land productive. It seems that they kept their end of the bargain: they made the land productive by growing a variety of vegetables and fruit crops.
The members of the Ati indigenous group are the original inhabitants of Boracay. The island's development and commercialization have pushed them into a marginal existence. In order to secure at least space for themselves, the Ati community in 2000 applied for a certificate of ancestral domain title (CADT). It was awarded in 2011. The ancestral domain is 2.1 hectares and, like the 3.2 hectares covered by the now-canceled CLOAs, located in Barangay Manoc-Manoc.
The giving of land to the Ati by former president Duterte could be interpreted as the government's making good on its mandate to uplift the plight of marginalized citizens. However, in the pursuit of social justice for the marginalized, the rights of others should not be trampled upon. In this case, the rights of legitimate owners or claimants whose side was apparently neither heard nor considered. As a government of laws and not of men, we can't just take privately owned property like some Robin Hood and give it to others, no matter how poor the latter, no matter how noble the intention.
Who is responsible? Duterte may have made the decision, but he was surrounded by the best and brightest in his Cabinet, whose job was more than simply following orders. Boracay's tourism sector earns millions of pesos for local government units and the national government alike and generates thousands of jobs. Placing it under agrarian reform was obviously contrary to common sense. Now we know that it wasn't even legal. The government must see to it that the Ati community, which made the land as productive as can be, will be justly compensated. Nothing less than the trustworthiness of the national government is at stake.