Group asks Pnoy to veto 2013 Apeco budget

A lawyers' group on Tuesday called on President Benigno Aquino III to veto the P353 million budget allocated for the controversial Aurora Pacific Economic and Free port Authority (Apeco) project in Casiguran next year.

"The President can make use of his line item veto prerogative as a constitutional mean to stop the proponents of Apeco from pushing this hard sell project in the town of Casiguran," lawyer Rachel Pastores of the Public Interest Law Center said.

Pastores is the legal counsel of several groups led by fisherfolk organization Pamalakaya, Panlalawigang Alyansa ng mga Magbubukid sa Aurora, Alyansa ng mga Magbubukid sa Gitnang Luzon and Anakpawis party list group.

Anakpawis filed a petition before the Supreme Court on October 2011 questioning the constitutionality of laws that led to the creation of Apeco.

Pastores said the president can make a difference by scrapping the budget through exercise of veto power as guaranteed by the 1987 Constitution.

She said the House of Representatives, Philippine Senate and the Office of the Solicitor General had already commented on the petition filed last year questioning the constitutionality of Apeco. 

She said the Apeco board had also submitted its comment to the Supreme Court.

"We hope the Supreme Court will decide on the merits of the case and on the collective sentiment of the Aurora people," Pastores said.

Last Oct. 11, 2011, the anti-Apeco groups filed a 110-page petition before the High Court, alleging that laws which created Apeco- namely Republic Act 9490 or the Aurora Special Economic Zone Authority (ASEZA act of 2007) and the amendatory law RA 10083 or the Aurora Pacific Economic Zone and Free Port Act of 2010 were unconstitutional.

Pastores said clients viewed that RA 9490 and RA 10083 violated the constitutional provisions pertaining to agrarian reform and social justice.

In their petition, the groups argued that agrarian reform and social justice were extremely violated by ASEZA and its amendatory law (Apeco) patently disregarded the agrarian reform beneficiaries of the agricultural lands awarded to them by the national government when Apeco started covering lands already covered and awarded through government land reform programs.

“We argued in our petition that provisions of RA 9490 and RA 10083 make no explicit mention of fishermen but the areas these laws subject to the establishment of ecozone cover the residences of subsistence fishermen and their fishing grounds," they said.

They added that in pursuant to Section 3 of RA 9490 and RA 10083, the following land areas of Aurora are subject for conversion into a free port but are currently lands that adjoin the fishing grounds of fisherfolk such as the shorelines, bays and inland rivers of Barangays Esteves, San Ildefonso, Cozo and Dibet.

They also argued the  plight of indigenous peoples whose rights are also reportedly violated by the ecozone project.

RA 10083 covers the areas being claimed by the Agtas and Dumagats in Barangays San Ildefonso, Culat and Cozo as part of their ancestral domain. 

The Apeco project will cover around 11,900 hectares of the indigenous people’s claim for ancestral domain in Casiguran.

In their petition, they claimed the people of Casiguran who are directly and unduly affected by the creation of ASEZA and Apeco were not consulted or heard before these laws were passed by Congress.