SC allows original owners to repurchase gov't-expropriated lot

The more than half-hectare lot situated at the old Lahug airport could have shot up to millions of pesos based on the current market value, but the Supreme Court has allowed the heirs of its original owners to repurchase the lot from the government at only P3 per square-meter.

This means that the heirs of Timoteo Moreno and Maria Rotea only need P16,356 to redeem from the government the 5,452 square-meter lot that was expropriated by the government sometime in 1961 to give way for the expansion of the airport in barangay Lahug.

Located just beside the Waterfront Cebu City Hotel, the lot, a portion of which is now being occupied by the regional office of the Department of Public Works and Highways, was expropriated by the government for only P3 per square-meter about 44 years ago.

Moreno and Rotea refused to sell the property because the amount was not acceptable to them during that time. But the government, through its negotiators, promised them the right to recover the property once it would no longer be used as airport.

The lot was later turned over to the Mactan Cebu International Airport Authority after the Lahug airport was abandoned in 1990, or about 29 years after the property was expropriated.

This prompted the heirs of Moreno and Rotea to ask the MCIAA to allow them to redeem the property as what was promised by the National Airport Corporation. But the MCIAA officials ignored their demand.

The heirs then sought the help of then President Fidel V. Ramos, but their request was never acted upon, prompting them to lodge a case before the regional trial court, which ruled in their favor.

The petitioners managed to present Asterio Uy, a retired Civil Aeronautics Administration employee, who testified before the court that he was among the team sent to Cebu City to negotiate with the lot owners in 1957.

Uy said that upon the instructions of CAA central office in Manila, the team leader who he only recalled as Atty. Ocampo has assured the landowners that once the airport would be transferred to Mactan, the lot would be returned to them.

But the MCIAA officials explained that the petitioners' claim was not documented. The SC, however, set their argument aside.

The high tribunal also discovered that a significant portion of the property had already been purchased by the Cebu Property Ventures, Inc. which was putting up a commercial complex.

"The government's taking of private property, and then transferring it to private persons under the guise of public use or purpose is the despotism found in the immense power of eminent domain," the SC ruled.

It said the direct and unconstitutional state's power to oblige a landowner to renounce his possession to another person, who would use it predominantly for his own private gain, is against the law. - Rene U. Borromeo