Picop union head hits Alvarez

BISLIG CITY, Surigao del Sur — Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Heherson Alvarez’s filing of an administrative complaint against a Regional Trial Court (RTC) judge after losing a case is "contemptible," the union president of the Paper Industries Corporation of the Philippines (Picop) said in a statement.

Quezon City RTC Judge Jose Paneda earlier decided a case in favor of Picop. Alvarez then filed an administrative complaint with the Supreme Court against the judge for what he claimed was "gross ignorance of the law and his manifest partiality."

Picop union president Joselito Soriano said Alvarez’s actions show "that (he) has no respect for the judicial system and his low regard for the law which he is expected to respect and uphold."

Soriano said Alvarez did not attend a single hearing, and that his lawyers "never dented" the documentary evidence which Picop’s witnesses presented.

"If Alvarez believes his cause was right, why did he not present himself as a witness?" he asked.

The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) presented one witness who, Soriano claimed, "only provided hearsay evidence," while another witness, he further alleged, "was obviously lying."

Picop, on the other hand, presented incontrovertible evidence all certified by the DENR, to prove its case, he added.

Soriano said Alvarez should have presented his arguments during the trial and not in his complaint against Paneda.

He also rebutted Alvarez’s allegation that Paneda granted Picop damages of P10 million a month without proof.

He said everybody in the Caraga region, except Alvarez, knew that Picop had partially shut down due to the secretary’s refusal to honor Picop’s government warranty over Timber License Agreement (TLA) No. 43.

The partial shutdown, he said, deprived 2,000 Picop workers of their livelihood, and the government of P100 million in taxes.

Soriano said the timber within TLA 43 was not harvested because Alvarez allegedly held back on TLA 43’s automatic conversion into an Integrated Forest Management Agreement (IFMA), as provided for by law.

On Alvarez’s insistence that Certificate of Ancestral Domain Claim (CADC) 095 was valid and that Picop was required by law to get a clearance from the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP), Soriano said a finding by the DENR’s legal division on Sept. 7, 2000, which was presented in court, showed that this CADC was never validly issued by the DENR and does not legally exist.