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Over 1,000 agrarian reform beneficiaries receive electronic land titles covering parcels of land in the Busuanga Pasture Reserve in northern Palawan
MANILA, Philippines – President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. distributed on Thursday, September 19, parcels of land in Palawan previously sequestered by the Cory Aquino government in 1986 as part of its effort to recover the ill-gotten wealth of the Marcoses and their cronies.
A 40,000-hectare land in Palawan was declared as the Busuanga Pasture Reserve on the island of Busuanga by the late president Ferdinand E. Marcos in 1975. Yulo King Ranch (YKR) Corporation — whose major stockholder included incumbent Environment Secretary Toni Yulo-Loyzaga’s father Luis Yulo — operated the pasture reserve in northern Palawan.
Last April, amid allegations that she owned YKR, Loyzaga said her family “has never owned this land and has no interest in owning it.”
On Thursday, 1,217 agrarian reform beneficiaries received electronic land titles covering 2,921.96 hectares of the Busuanga Pasture Reserve, according to a press release from the regional office of the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR).
An additional 53 Certificates of Land Ownership Award (CLOAs) in a resettlement site in the coastal town of Narra on the main island of Palawan, separate from the lands distributed in Busuanga island, were also distributed.
The DAR said in April 2022 that around 9,000 hectares of the 40,000-hectare Busuanga Pasture Reserve were alienable and disposable and can be distributed under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP).
President Marcos said during the ceremonial turnover of titles on Thursday in Coron, Palawan, that the distribution is a continuation of his father and DAR Secretary Conrado Estrella III’s grandfather’s agrarian reform work.
“Kaya tinutuloy lang po namin ang trabaho ng aming mga ninuno,” Marcos said. (We’re just continuing the work of our forefathers.)
‘A breakthrough’
The DAR on Thursday described the distribution as “a breakthrough after all the challenges that hindered the acquisition and distribution of the Busuanga Pasture Reserve.” These factors were not enumerated or mentioned by the agency, but the legal cases over the land were likely one of them.
Months after the Marcoses were exiled in Hawaii, the Presidential Commission on Good Government sequestered the YKR in 1986 and gave full possession and assets to the Bureau of Animal Industry. A prolonged legal battled over the property ensued.
The Supreme Court lifted the sequestration order in 2010, saying it was “not the be-all and end-all of the efforts of the government to recover unlawfully amassed wealth.” The Sandiganbayan did the same in 2023.
In September 2021, the DAR under the Duterte administration distributed 250 hectares out of 427 hectares of a portion of the YKR to 98 agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs) in Busuanga. Another 900 hectares of the YKR in the Busuanga Pasture Reserve were distributed to 786 ARBs in April 2022, three months before President Rodrigo Duterte’s term ended. – Rappler.com
