The plunder of our public lands and national patrimony

TWO legal victories in the Supreme Court that remain with me to this day involved two vast prime lands of Fort Bonifacio — the Jusmag case (Republic v. Southside Homeowners Association) and the Navy Village case (Navy Officers Village Association v. Republic). When I came upon these cases as the then-newly promoted BCDA general counsel, the Office of the Solicitor General had lost the Jusmag case already from the regional trial court to the Court of Appeals. These cases involved the illegal titling of a total of 82 hectares of prime lands in Fort Bonifacio by more than 100 generals, admirals and senior officers of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, mostly retired. The losses in the lower courts were intriguing because it was public knowledge that these lands were part of the military reservation. In fact, these were supposedly the official on-base housing facilities of the AFP for its senior officers and its upkeep was paid for in the millions by the armed forces.

Many tried to discourage me from pursuing the prosecution of these cases. However, as public servants, we, in BCDA, were expected to fund the AFP modernization, which at that time was becoming the butt of a joke among defense experts. If we did not act on it, our soldiers would have blamed us for gross negligence. For the dignity of our men and women in uniform and for the security of our nation, we had no choice but to pursue these cases to recover these lands worth more than hundreds of billions of pesos that would redound to the benefit of our military.

THE CITY BUILDER