Give 93-1 lot occupants peace

I heard that Cebu Governor Gwendolyn Garcia sent a letter to Cebu City Mayor Edgardo Labella requesting immediate return of all owner’s duplicate copies of Certificates of Title of all province-owned properties included in the deal wherein the province and the city swapped parcels of land. My information says that this is the governor’s follow up to her January communication.

I also learned that Governor Garcia claimed, in her request letter, that there were several inherent defects in the Deeds of Donation executed by the two local government units namely the Cebu Province, on one hand, and the City of Cebu, on the other hand, which instruments were supposed to document the land swap.

In my recollection, there was an earlier Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) signed in 2016, by then Governor Hilario Davide III, representing the province and then Mayor Tomas Osmeña, representing the city, for their eventual exchange of several province and city-owned lots. I suppose that Governor Davide and Mayor Osmena were authorized by the Sangguniang Panlalawigan and the Sangguniang Panlungsod respectively to enter into that agreement. The separate Deeds of Donation and acceptance supposedly consummated what was embodied in the MOA. It must be assumed that all the formal requisites of a valid contract were complied with by both the province and the city and the lawyers who notarized such documents saw to it such legal compliance.

Governor Garcia must have carefully and thoroughly studied this land swap deal entered into by her lawyer predecessor as to assert that there were inherent defects in the instruments as well as in the required supporting documents enough for her to demand the return of the titles of province owned lots. In other words, she must have concluded that such documents are, if we were to use a recent statement of President Rodrigo Duterte, mere scraps of paper that are so valueless as to be thrown to the waste basket.

There are few things that bother me that with, due respect to the governor, should be considered. One, the governor’s demand for the return of the titles of the province owned lots should have been coupled with an offer to return whatever the city gave up in exchange. If it was a land swap deal, the city must have also delivered to the province the titles of its lot covered by the transaction and so it has the right to the return of its evidence of ownership.

Two, an outsider like me, imagines that the deal, documented in 2016 yet, was in fact, consummated in good faith. The exchange of the Deeds of Donation and Acceptance and the physical turn over of the titles gave an aura of legitimacy and validity. If the governor believes that inherent defects attended the instruments, she cannot just unilaterally demand for the physical turn over of the titles. I posit that a mutual voluntary revocation of the deal executed by both the province and the city in formal documents shall precede the return exchange of the titles. If the city is unwilling to agree to sign such mutual revocation, the province has to initiate a court action to declare the invalidity of the Deeds of Donation and Acceptance and only when it gets a favorable decision can it demand the return of such titles.

Whether it is going to be a search for a voluntary revocation of the corresponding deeds or a court action for the declaration of invalidity of the concerned instruments, the situation will be like a ping pong game where the people occupying these lots, perceptively covered by Ord. 93-1, are like the ping pong ball. Believe me, the residents involved have been long subjected to years of incredible stress. Their sense of uncertainty has been traumatic. Why can’t the governor and the mayor sit down and execute whatever document to make the occupancy of the settlers legitimate, valid and peaceful?