A former secretary of the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) is in the hot seat after being accused of bungling the land distribution under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) on the tourist island of Boracay.

Former Agrarian Reform secretary John Castriciones was pointed to in a land dispute as having been negligent and overstepped his functions in confiscating or grabbing private properties on the leisure island.

Lawyer Victoria Lim-Florido, counsel of the owner of a 1,282-square meter lot in Sitio Angol, Barangay Manoc-manoc in Boracay, which is the subject of an ongoing dispute, alleged that Castriciones “committed mistake upon mistake and error upon error and had never understood the functions of his office and the real purpose of Republic Act 6657 or the CARP Law.”

“While my client was processing the titling, sometime on 8 November 2018, the land was suddenly ‘confiscated’ by then DAR Secretary Castriciones, and it was included among the lands distributed to the Atis under CLOA OCT CARP 2018000276, where 44

Ati members were named thereafter as alleged farmer-beneficiaries,” Florido told the DAILY TRIBUNE.

The current DAR administration, under Secretary Conrado Estrella, admitted in a briefing on Tuesday that his predecessor did not follow the law in providing the certificates of land ownership award (CLOAs) to beneficiaries, particularly the Ati tribe, which had staked a claim to the land of Florido’s client.

According to the document obtained by DAILY TRIBUNE, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources declared the land alienable and disposable per Land Classification Map 3462 on 8 May 2019.

Not arable

However, the land was proven unfit for planting based on a certification from the Department of Agriculture-Bureau of Soil and Water Management on 27 July 2022.

“The area is characterized by excessively drained and shallow sandy clay loam-textured soil derived from low limestone hills belonging to the Faraon series, the presence of many abundant stones and gravel-size coralline limestone, exposed coralline limestone bedrock, and rock outcrops classified as moderate to severe erosion,” the DA certification signed by the head of the Agricultural Land Management and Evaluation Division read.

Florido said the land was neither public property nor an ancestral domain.

The lawyer claimed that no notices were issued to her client regarding the confiscation of the land for inclusion in CARP. The land owner was not even compensated, prompting her client to file a protest with the DAR.

DAR granted the protest of Florido’s client, ordering the cancellation of the CLOA on 15 March 2023.

However, a lone member of the Ati tribe filed a motion for reconsideration, which Estrella denied on 5 December 2023.

DAILY TRIBUNE tried to contact Castriciones to no avail. Messages on his Meta (Facebook) page also went unanswered.

In an earlier television interview, Castriciones claimed the Ati members should not be evicted from the small parcel of land that was distributed during President Rodrigo Duterte’s term.

“I think this must be reconsidered. They are the IPs who were dispossessed when many of these businessmen and some other very enterprising persons from the different islands went to Boracay and saw that it was good for tourism, thus depriving the IPs who have the right over the land,” he said.

Amid the hullabaloo, Estrella said his department will provide government land to the Ati members through Executive Order 75, and they will be given from one to three hectares plus support services to make their farms sustainable.

EO 75, signed by President Duterte in 2019, directed all departments, bureaus, offices, and instrumentalities of the government to identify lands owned by the government devoted to or suitable for agriculture and distribute them to qualified beneficiaries.

Help needed

In a March statement, Delsa Justo of the Boracay Ati Tribal Organization and a lay member of the Daughters of Charity expressed disgust at the DAR for issuing the CLOA in 2018 and later voiding it.

“We felt the heaviness of the cross when children (aged 12 to 14) were left inside the property in an unexpected turn of events. Their mother went to attend a meeting with the leaders of our tribe and our legal counsel because of the trespassing incident. The guards who forced their way into the property used the opportunity to lock the gate and put up a wooden barrier barring the entry of anybody, including the mother of the children. The children understood that leaving their home may mean being unable to return to it, so they chose to stay,” she said.

Justo maintained that the parcel of land was theirs under a title.

“The safety and well-being of our people, especially the children, is our main concern as there are threats to demolish the houses despite the lack of a writ of demolition presented to us,” she said.

Justo vowed to fight for their rights as they would not give up their land.

In 2014, an administrative order was signed by then-Agriculture Secretary Virgilio de los Reyes giving broader powers to the DAR secretary.

An amendatory AO removed the indefeasibility of the emancipation patents, CLOAs, and other titles under agrarian reform while emphasizing due process in the cancellation proceedings.

De los Reyes, during his tenure, said the new AO applied to all cases involving involuntary cancellation.