By Diego Morra
The trouble with the cacique, inquilinos and landlords is that they are entitled to acquire, develop, lease and sell properties as they please, even if the 1935 Constitution barred any person or corporation from owing 1,024 hectares. Now that they have erased that provision from the Charter, you have plutocrats gunning to buy or acquire through ostensible “joint ventures” every available square inch of land in the market.
After the Parity Rights ended in 1974, logging concessions owned by Americans in Northern Luzon, in Cagayan and Isabela, Apayao, down to Nueva Vizcaya (perhaps including the 25,000 hectares of land owned by an Ilocano political dynasty in Villaverde, Nueva Vizcaya) and those in the fastnesses of Samar that ended up with the late Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile, the logging and mining concessions in Negros Occidental, South Cotabato, Davao Oriental, Sultan Kudarat, all of them became easy pickings for politicians, large corporations and, naturally, the special class of more equal Filipinos generically regarded as Marcos cronies.
Manny Villar, whose dad came from Iloilo and was a government employee, knew the greater value of land as an asset that appreciates during prosperous times as well as when the streets are littered with blood. Together with Cynthia Villar of the landed Aguilar family in Las Pinas and Paranaque, they belonged to that gang of ambitious UP business administration students that made tambay at A&W of the Gutierrez in Cubao, Quezon City. The Aguilar estate was the laboratory in which Manny and Cynthia cut their teeth, transforming the same into corporate fangs that drew profitable blood from the land.
Manny and Cynthia accumulated land during the gory days of martial law, when the Marcos dictatorship kicked out the businessmen identified with the opposition, and land values sank like the ill-starred Japanese aircraft carriers in Midway during World War II. When the martial law regime thought of pushing low-cost mass housing projects, the Villar gang was there to respond positively with their Camella and Palmera Homes, the same period when Fil-Estate was also accumulating land and the idea of “landbanking” gained currency. Eventually, the Villars threw their hats into the political ring, a move that led to their combining political power and securing bigger capital to expand their businesses.
After failing in his bid to become President (with many of his subdivisions giving him a big fat egg at the polling precincts) despite what political observers said was his purchase of the Nacionalista Party (NP), retreated to his catacombs, plotting to make hay in his cemeteries. Still obsessed with land, he failed to snatch sequestered or surrendered crony properties in Cavite as a top official of the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) flatly rejected his bid to acquire the land, through shortcuts or via huge loans from state banks. There is suspicion that part of the land now comprising the 3,500 Villar City could have been sequestered properties.
Now, Ombudsman Jesus Crispin “Boying” Remulla is hot on the heels of the Villars precisely over the dubious projects financed by government that gave undue advantage to the Villars. These projects, the Sagip Ilog (Las Piñas–Zapote River Rehabilitation) and Riverdrive, have been lauded by the Villars and their foreign press release distributors as “pioneering models of community-led river rehabilitation, flood control, and waste management. These programs have received numerous national and international awards. These recognitions stand as proof of the project’s positive environmental, social and community impact.” Las Piñas Rep. Mark Anthony Santos has repudiated the Villar claim that the Riverdrive project benefited the people of Las Pinas, Paranaque and Bacoor. He protested that the Zapote River Drive Project raised the values of Villar properties.
“Yung mga creeks namin dito nilagyan din ng kalsada papunta rin doon sa mga establishments at subdivisions nila,” Santos roared. “Ang lupa na nagkakahalaga ng P2,000 to P3,000 per square meter, kapag nilagyan mo ng kalsada ‘yan, nilagyan mo ng isang connecting bridge papunta sa isang malaking lungsod, definitely tataas ang presyo ng mga lupa mo,” he added. Stranger still is the fact that the roads were built on the mandatory 3-meter easement along rivers and creeks that should not be touched since it is public land but the Villars are even bragging that they spent their precious millions to finance their altruism, to hell with Presidential Decree No. 1607, the law that covers easements and urban waterways.
Newspaper reports indicate that the second phase of the Las Piñas River Drive project, which runs from the end of the C-5 Extension Road to CAA Road, cost ₱120.76 million. All told, ₱2.5-billion will be spent for the Las Piñas-Zapote River Drive flood control initiative. The project, which combines a road with retaining walls and slope protection structures, is now under fire, with local officials claiming the easement roads alone run for 40 kilometers. Worse, the project, which was supposed to be under the supervision of former DPWH secretary and now Sen. Mark Villar, was part of ₱18 billion projects undertaken by a contractor who happened to be his relative. Does bad conscience rule the Villar roost? Even if the Riverdrive venture won six or 60 local and international awards for the Villars, as the Indonesia-based PR outfit claims, it cannot erase the illegality of the whole shebang, and Villar projects are ineluctably premised on getting more bang for the buck, particularly the people’s buck.
