All fair game

Being ruthless, unfortunately, is among the attributes of a conglomerate to maximize its profits and become a business legend. Now, the new target of the corporate titan is an ancestral land in Palawan where it intends to put up an eco-tourism resort.

The firm admitted owning 7,000 hectares of titled properties on Bugsuk Island which it amassed by purchasing the companies that held the original titles issued in 1974 as part of the Land Reform Program.

A nearby paradise called Marianghangin, an island close to Bugsuk and governed by Bugsuk Island’s barangay, is also being considered for development.

The company previously denied any ecotourism projects being developed in the area but government documents showed a newly formed unit, registered in 2019, plans a development project on Bugsuk Island.

The indigenous people (IP) are up in arms as a result. Nine leaders of the Molbog and Palaw’an tribes held a hunger strike outside the Department of Agrarian Reform office in Diliman, Quezon City seeking the reinstatement of the Notice of Coverage (NoC) from the agency on their ancestral lands on Bugsuk Island, Balabac.

Residents of Sitio Mariahangin had rejected the company’s unending offers in increasing amounts for their resettlement, with the most recent offer being made on 4 December.

The IPs, who are members of the Sambilog-Balik Bugsuk Movement, urged Agrarian Reform Secretary Conrado Estrella III to return the NoC to 10,821 hectares of land on Bugsuk Island, Balabac town in southern Palawan, including their ancestral land, to them.

In the Environmental Impact Statement Summary of the proposed Bugsuk Island Eco-Tourism Development project, a large swath of 5,567.54 hectares will be used for the development.

In Barangays Bugsuk and Sebaring, around 1,141.84 hectares are slated for infrastructure development, including for the main Bugsuk Island Resort, an airport with a passenger terminal, a sanitary landfill, and a sewage treatment plant, along with water and power supply systems.

The construction of the main resort will take place between 2025 and 2029, but the internal crew will have access to other support facilities like an airstrip, lodging, and fuel pumps by next year.

Since the disputed ancestral land is not covered by the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program, DAR revoked the NoC in 2023, returning the holdings to the company.

That is when the trouble started as most of the IPs do not have civil records even of their birth. The IP representative had difficulty pointing out members of an IP tribe, although some in Southern Palawan earlier had an electronic registry of their members.

Decades of displacement, lack of government records, intermarriage between tribesmen and outsiders, and their cultural traits of typically being shy, nomadic and rooted in oral instead of written tradition, proof of their designation has become a problem, that is, except for their own people.

In the true fashion of a conquering overlord, the conglomerate has exploited the innocence of the tribal minorities, seducing them to exchange their heritage for a fleeting amount that would be recovered many times over when the resort project is completed.