Thirty four farmers trooped to Padre Faura Monday afternoon to accompany 14 fellow farmers who filed a 55-page petition for review on certiorari with application for the issuance of a temporary restraining order (TRO) and/or writ of preliminary injunction preventing the execution of a Regional Trial Court (RTC) order directing them to vacate a 200-hectare parcel of land in Barangay Caballero and Ganaderia.
The farmers were represented by counsel Emmanuel Ysip before the docket receiving section of the SC. Mayor Adrianne Mae Cuevas of this city also accompanied them.
They lamented that the Philippine Army, through a court order which they questioned, are pushing them out of the land they have been tilling “since time immemorial” when both the national and local governments introduced programs to make them more productive.
The Department of Agrarian Reform, they said, has been constructing small water impounding projects (SWIP) for their irrigation while the city government has built a farmto- market road.
“Napakatagal naming naghirap sa pagsasaka doon at ngayon, kung kailan programa ni Presidente PNoy ang rice self-sufficiency ay saka nila aagawin sa amin,” said Paul Bautista,78.
“They (the military) have been oppressing us when they are supposed to protect us, being the soldiers of the people,” said Julius Bautista, another resident.
Cuevas said she is supporting the farmers’ cause because they have been deprived of their livelihood since the military grabbed their farmlands in 2013.
“I take pity on them because it was their only source of livelihood and it was taken from them,” she said. The petition was filed by the farmers after the 12th Division of the Court of Appeals, in its June 16, 2015 Resolution, merely noted and did not take action on their petition for review of the Palayan RTC Branch 40’s decision reversing and setting aside the Municipal Trial Court in Cities (MTCC) order which ruled in their favor relative to the case of forcible entry they filed against Catapang and Lieutenant Colonels Benito Doniego Jr. and Alfredo Patarata.
The petitioners are tilling a 200-hectare farmland in Caballero and Ganaderia for at least 10 years, with other farmers claiming a longer period. In their petition, the farmers sought a prayer for the issuance of a TRO enjoining, preventing, prohibiting or restraining Palayan City Judge Evelyn Turla from enforcing and executing his December 9, 2014 order directing them to vacate the lands; and for the High Court to render a decision affirming the October 8,2013 decision of the Palayan MTCC.
The farmers said the CA, in issuing its resolution, denied all of their pleadings and the corresponding reliefs they sought.
They said the CA committed a reversible error in violating prevailing laws and jurisprudence resulting in grave abuse of discretion amounting to “lack or excess of jurisdiction when it (1) refused to consider that the RTC gravely erred in reversing and setting aside the MTCC decision, (2) when it cited on the issue of ownership, land registration and recovery of possession instead of forcible entry filed by them (3) when it ordered them to vacate the lands and turn over the same to the military although such reliefs were not prayed for the respondents Catapang, Doniego and Patarata and (4) when it changed the docket number of the petition for review.”
Catapang and the other respondents said the subject farmlands form part of the military reservation and that the AFP, through the Army has long been in legal and physical possession de jure of the entire expanse.
He claimed the Army has been occupying and possessing the subject property as far back as 1955 when then-President Ramon Magsaysay issued Presidential Proclamation 237 reserving the area for military purposes and withdrawing them from sale or settlement.
The proclamation was amended on March 13,2006 when then-President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo issued Presidential Proclamation 1033 including the 200 hectares among the areas reserved for the off-base housing site for Army soldiers.
