Limbo

The Xevera townships in Mabalacat and Bacolor are not just massive housing projects. They are now communities.

Property developer Globe Asiatique built over 6,000 housing units in these two projects from 2008 to 2011. Those units are now populated. The beneficiaries enjoy the amenities of a planned development.

Everything the housing beneficiaries expected from a township development is there. The only thing missing is documentation of the housing award.

Because of that, the thousands of residents in these communities feel their lives are in some sort of limbo. They have homes and they have neighbors. But they do not have proper titles to what they own. There is fragility to the existence of these communities that might not seem evident at first glance.

That overpowering sense of fragility is related to the rather bizarre cases filed by Pag-IBIG Fund against developer Delfin Lee, owner of Globe Asiatique.

In 2012, the Pag-IBIG Fund claimed the developer defrauded them to the tune of over P6 billion using fake beneficiaries and selling units to multiple buyers. The residents of the two projects, however, attest they are real beneficiaries and that no other claimants have come knocking on their doors with duplicate claims to the homes they occupy.

The trial court in Makati junked Pag-IBIG Fund’s claim although a court in Pampanga found probable cause to hold Delfin Lee on charges of multiple estafa, a non-bailable offense. Lee was eventually thrown into a Pampanga jail where he was kept for over four years. It was an ordeal comparable to the most chilling Gulag stories we have read: a man thrown behind bars for unclear charges.

While the cases filed against Lee meandered from the trial courts to the Court of Appeals and eventually to the Supreme Court, the residents of the two Xevera communities found themselves in some legal twilight zone. Pag-IBIG Fund would not collect their payments and properly document their awards until the legal issues were resolved.

Resolving the legal issues has taken years. In the meantime, the residents could not get their homes properly titled.

Both Pag-IBIG Fund and Delfin Lee suffered as well. The Fund had not been collecting amortizations. Lee wallowed in jail.

Finally, after many delays, the Supreme Court ruled the charge of multiple estafa against Lee could not be sustained by the facts. The charge was downgraded to simple estafa and Lee was allowed bail. The property developer is a free man again.

Someone screwed up here mightily and it was not Delfin Lee.

Freed from jail, the property developer could have chosen to simply walk away and try to live down this nightmare, perhaps shifting to a less traumatic line of business. But he could not bring himself to abandon the thousands of residents in the Xevera projects left stranded by the legal murk.

The judicial proceedings could not establish the claim Lee defrauded Pag-IBIG Fund to the tune of P6 billion. The Fund, after all, lends to its members and not to developers.

But the same proceedings also established the Pag-IBIG Fund owes the developer some P600 million. That is not a small collectible.

Delfin Lee, despite all he endured, is now offering to negotiate with Pag-IBIG Fund for an amicable settlement that will ensure the thousands of beneficiaries now living in the two Xevera townships proper documentation of their status. The least the housing fund can do, for the sake of the stranded residents of the two townships, is to take up this offer with a more open mind.

Kavanaugh

I am not sure how many Filipinos watched the wrenching proceedings at the US Senate concerning Trump nominee to the US Supreme Court Brett Kavanaugh. I did – through every dramatic twist and turn of it.

Kavanaugh used to be a Republican Party operative until he was appointed judge at the Washington circuit court. Last July, Donald Trump picked the hardline conservative judge as his nominee to the highest court. If seated, Kavanaugh would surely tip the balance toward  the conservative side for decades to come.

There is much at stake here for the culture wars now raging in the US. A strong shift in the balance would endanger all the gains accomplished by American progressives over the past decades. It could reopen the landmark Roe v. Wade decision that recognized women’s rights over their bodies and allowed abortion. It could jeopardize gains made in recognizing gay rights and probably affect future constitutional issues over immigration.

The struggle over Kavanaugh’s appointment to the highest court is more than just partisan interest. It has become the fulcrum of the larger struggle over a more liberal culture – akin to what many European now take as a matter of course.

The last trench the minority Democrats found to scuttle Kavanaugh’s appointment involves three sex assault allegations made against the judge. Although the incidents may have happened decades ago, they bear on questions about the nominee’s temperament, disposition and suitability for a lifetime appointment. These are important because the Supreme Court has become the principal arena for the battles waged between liberals and conservatives.

Kavanaugh’s fate hangs on balance as the senators have postponed a vote pending an FBI investigation of the allegations made against the judge.

In a few weeks, we will be choosing the next Chief Justice of our Supreme Court. Our procedure varies a little from that used to name justices to the American high court. Because of that variance, the public debate here is not as intense, ideological and comprehensive as we seen on the American side.