Palace remands Sumilao farmers’ land claim to DAR Jerome Aning Inquirer
November 28, 2007
MANILA, Philippines -- Malacañang has granted the appeal of Higaonon farmers from Sumilao, Bukidnon to have the Department of Agrarian Reform hear their petition to stop the conversion of a disputed land into a hog farm.
In an order dated November 16, the Office of the President, through Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita, remanded the dispute to DAR, saying the agency has the expertise on the factual issues raised by the farmers, including their insistence that they have the legal standing to protest the conversion.
Ermita said DAR is “a trier of facts on specific matters within its field of expertise [and is] in a better position to assess and evaluate the credibility of the contending parties and the validity of their respective evidence.”
“Hence, remanding the case back to the DAR is but appropriate under the circumstances,” he added.
Some 60 Higaonon farmers from Su-milao are marching to Manila to bring their plight to Malacañang and DAR. As of Wednesday, they were nearing the Quezon-Laguna boundary, having marched in some 1,500 kilometers. They are expected to reach the outskirts of Metro Manila on Monday.
“The farmers are happy with the decision by Malacañang, which in effect reversed its earlier denial of the farmers’ petition on the ground that the petitioners lacked legal standing,” Socrates Bansuela, coordinator of Lakaw Sumilao Network, said in a statement.
The farmers are claiming the 144-hectare property in the village of San Vicente, Sumilao, saying it is agricultural land covered by the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law and that they were the farmer-beneficiaries of the property. However, in 1999, the Supreme Court upheld the conversion of the property to agro-industrial use and ruled that the 165 Sumilao farmers opposing it had no legal standing to do so.
In 2004, the farmers revived the case and asked the DAR to stop the conversion, but Agrarian Reform Secretary Nasser Pangandaman refused to hear the petition, saying the DAR had no jurisdiction. He referred the case to Malacañang, which originally ordered the conversion.
