The SaMURO and 93-1 models

Shortly after the 1988 local elections, I applied in practice the social justice principle in constitutional law that I had been teaching in law school. Along San Miguel Street in Barangay Lorega-San Miguel lived an educator by the name of Antonio Alesna. He was a neighbor of Lily Talagon, then regional director of what is now the DSWD, an office where my late mother was a pioneer. Alesna and Talagon told me that they and neighbors, all belonging to the San Miguel United Residents Organisation (SaMURO), were squatters of a city-owned lot and asked if there was a way for them to acquire the land where their houses stood. Touched by their predicament, I thought of how Justice Laurel defined social justice and crafted an ordinance aimed at allowing the SaMURO to buy from the city, at a price affordable to them, whatever small lots they were occupying. To weave economic reality to the constitutional precept, I incorporated a five year installment period in the ordinance.

 When then-governor Vicente de la Serna assumed the helm of Cebu province, he also thought of social justice -- “the humanization of laws and the equalization of social and economic forces so that justice in its objectively secular concept may at least be approximated.” I knew that his heart was for the less privileged. The area of his concern though was much wider than the one I met in SaMURO. While I had just about a hundred San Miguel families to take care of their shelter, Gov de la Serna had to tackle the needs of a few thousand households. His mind was consumed in engineering a solution to the housing problem of those landless individuals occupying.

Acting upon Gov de la Serna’s inspiration, the Sangguniang Panglalawigan of Cebu passed the Ordinance 93-1. This was the first provincial ordinance in the year 1993 that tried to address the yearnings of the landless among his constituencies. These many hectares of residential lands that are brought within the social operation of the law are scattered in different barangays in Cebu City.  In essence, Ordinance 93-1 replicated the city ordinance for the SaMURO residents by allowing the people occupying the province owned-lots to pay the area they were occupying within a prescribed period. The clear intent of the de La Serna administration was to make lawful land owners out of illegal settlers. To my knowledge, many occupants availed of the benefits of the local law and they received the certificates of title.

 There were beneficiaries of 93-1 who, for one reason like financial incapacity or another such as utter indifference, failed to take advantage of the social mind of Gov de la Serna. There were still others who imagined that they could never be evicted even if they would refuse to pay. That opportunist attitude got boosted when the next governor approved an amendatory ordinance that extended the installment payment period. Yet, these people took no reasonable efforts to make them true owners of the land they were squatting. The Province of Cebu was consequently prejudiced. It had non-performing assets with billions-worth in real estate assets that were literally usurped by the occupants.

 The Cebu City administration came into view. It moved to save the province of its burdensome financial handicap. In a move they termed as “swap”, the city exchanged the lots in 93-1 with valuable pieces of property, including a portion of the South Road Properties.

 Here is my beef. I may be paying modest taxes but I am a city taxpayer. City revenues, of which I am a contributor, have been used to pay, until today, for the loan that was used to finance the south reclamation area. There is no project I know of to be financed by any revenue generated by the SRP. Instead, the city is segregating a portion of the reclaimed land to exchange with the 93-1 lots which are mostly nonperforming assets. This act of our city leadership is not social justice implored. It is public disservice.