SECOND DIVISION
G.R. No. 210738, August 14, 2019
REPUBLIC OF THE PHILIPPINES, PETITIONER, v. SPOUSES GUILLERMO ALONSO* AND INOCENCIA BRITANICO-ALONSO, RESPONDENTS.
D E C I S I O N
REYES, J. JR., J.:
This is a Petition for Review on Certiorari filed by the Republic of the Philippines (Republic), represented by the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) assailing the Decision1 dated May 31, 2013, and Resolution2 dated December 12, 2013, of the Court of Appeals-Cebu City (CA) in CA-G.R. CV No. 03510 which ordered the registration of Lot 2209, Cad. 24, Iloilo Cadastre, AP-06-005399.
All told, the instant petition for registration is hereby dismissed for failure of the petitioners to substantiate their claim by preponderance of evidence.Aggrieved, spouses Alonso filed a Motion for Reconsideration, which was denied in an Order8 dated April 26, 2010.
SO ORDERED.
WHEREFORE, premises considered, the appeal is GRANTED. The assailed Order dated 29 December 2009 of the Regional Trial Court, Branch 22, Iloilo City, in Cadastral Case No. 19 is REVERSED and SET ASIDE. A new judgment is hereby rendered granting and approving the registration of Lot 2209, Cad. 24, Iloilo Cadastre, AP-06-005399, situated in Poblacion, Oton, Iloilo, in the names of spouses Guillermo Alonso and Inocencia Britanico-Alonso. Upon finality of this decision, let a corresponding decree of registration be issued in petitioners-appellants' favor.Similarly, the Resolution13 dated December 12, 2013, denied the assertions of the Republic in their Motion for Reconsideration.
SO ORDERED.12
Section 14. Who may apply. The following persons may file in the proper Court of First Instance an application for registration of title to land, whether personally or through their duly authorized representatives:Under Section 14 (1), it is necessary that: (a) the land or property forms part of the alienable and disposable lands of the public domain; (b) the applicant and his predecessors-in-interest have been in open, continuous, exclusive, and notorious possession and occupation of the same; and (c) it is under a bona fide claim of ownership since June 12, 1945, or earlier.16
(1) Those who by themselves or through their predecessors-in- interest have been in open, continuous, exclusive and notorious possession and occupation of alienable and disposable lands of the public domain under a bona fide claim of ownership since June 12, 1945, or earlier. (Emphasis supplied)
(2) Those who have acquired ownership of private lands by prescription under the provision of existing laws.
(3) Those who have acquired ownership of private lands or abandoned river beds by right of accession or accretion under the existing laws.
(4) Those who have acquired ownership of land in any other manner provided for by law.
To prove that the property subject of an application for original registration is part of the alienable and disposable lands of the public domain, applicants must identify a positive act of the government, such as an official proclamation, declassifying inalienable public land into disposable land for agricultural or other purposes. To sufficiently establish this positive act, they must submit (1) a certification from the CENRO or the Provincial Environment and Natural Resources Office (PENRO); and (2) a copy of the original classification approved by the DENR Secretary and certified as a true copy by the legal custodian of the official records.17 (Citations omitted)The import of the concurrence of these requirements was belabored in the case of Republic of the Philippines v. Spouses Go,18 citing, Republic of the Philippines v. T.A.N. Properties, Inc.,19 to wit:
The applicant for land registration must prove that the DENR Secretary had approved the land classification and released the land of the public domain as alienable and disposable, and that the land subject of the application for registration falls within the approved area per verification through survey by the PENRO or CENRO. In addition, the applicant for land registration must present a copy of the original classification approved by the DENR Secretary and certified as a true copy by the legal custodian of the official records. These facts must be established to prove that the land is alienable and disposable.In this case, it must be noted that the RTC and the CA did not exhaustively discuss whether the subject property is classified as alienable and disposable as the focal point of their rulings was the determination of spouses Alonso's compliance with the occupation and possession requirement.
Endnotes:
* "Alonzo" in some parts of the rollo.
1 Penned by Executive Justice Pampio A. Abarintos, with Associate Justices Gabriel T. Ingles and Marilyn B. Lagura-Yap, concurring; rollo, pp. 59-66.
2 Id. at 68-69.
3 Id. at 60.
4 Id. at 90-94.
5 Id. at 97-99.
6 Id. at 60-61.
7 Penned by Judge Guilljie D. Delfin-Lim; id. at 308-320.
8 Id. at 331-332.
9 Id. at 346.
10 Id. at 367.
11 Supra note 1.
12 Id. at 65.
13 Supra note 2.
14 Id. at 42-43.
15 AMENDING AND CODIFYING THE LAWS RELATIVE TO REGISTRATION OF PROPERTY AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES. Approved June 11, 1978.
16Dumo v. Republic of the Philippines, G.R. No. 218269, June 6, 2018.
17Republic v. Nicolas, G.R. No. 181435, October 2, 2017, 841 SCRA 328, 345.
18 815 Phil. 306, 325 (2017).
19 578 Phil. 441, 452-453 (2008).
20Republic v. Heirs of Maxima Lachica, 730 Phil. 414, 423 (2014).
CAGUIOA, J.:
On the basis of Republic v. T.A.N. Properties1 (T.A.N.), which requires the presentation of (i) a certificate of land classification status issued by the Community Environment and Natural Resources Office (CENRO) or Provincial Environment and Natural Resources Office (PENRO) of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR); and (ii) a copy of the original classification approved by the DENR Secretary and certified as a true copy by the legal custodian of the official records,2 the ponencia holds that respondents failed to prove that the subject property was part of the alienable and disposable lands of the public domain.
I concur with the ponencia that the present petition should be granted because respondents here failed to submit a CENRO or PENRO certification, i.e., the first requirement of T.A.N.
For clarification, however, I submit, as I did in my Concurring and Dissenting Opinion in Dumo v. Republic of the Philippines3 (Dumo), that the second requirement established in T.A.N. has been rendered superfluous and unnecessary after the issuance of DENR Administrative Order No. (AO) 2012-9 on November 14, 2012, which delegated unto the CENRO, PENRO and the National Capital Region (NCR) Regional Executive Director (RED-NCR) the authority to issue not only certifications on land classification status, but also certified true copies of approved land classification (LC) maps4 with respect to lands falling within their respective jurisdictions.
DENR AO 2012-9 pertinently provides:
In view of the thrust of the government to [make] public service more accessible to the public, the authority to sign and/or issue the following documents is hereby delegated to the [CENROs], except in the National Capital Region (NCR) where the same shall be vested upon the [RED-NCR]:Since the certification in question in T.A.N. was issued prior to DENR AO 2012-9, i.e., in 1997, the Court's decision therein was correctly premised upon the lack of authority on the part of CENRO to issue certified true copies of approved LC maps or to serve as repository for said copies. The same may be said of the CENRO certifications presented in Republic v. Lualhati5 (Lualhati) and Republic v. Nicolas,6 (Nicolas) which correctly applied T.A.N.
- Certification on land classification status regardless of area based on existing approved [LC maps]; and
- Certified true copy of the approved [LC maps] used as basis in the issuance of the certification on the land classification status of a particular parcel of land. (Emphasis supplied.)
Section 20. Proof of private document. — Before any private document offered as authentic is received in evidence, its due execution and authenticity must be proved either:Necessarily, the submission of a CENRO, PENRO or RED-NCR certificate as evidence of registrability entails the presentation of the testimony of the proper issuing officer before the trial court for the purpose of authentication and verification. This exercise renders the presentation of the original classification and LC map in addition to the CENRO, PENRO or RED-NCR certificate redundant, inasmuch as the matters to which the original classification and LC map pertain may already be threshed out during the direct and cross-examination of the CENRO, PENRO or RED-NCR officer concerned. Once the certification in question is authenticated and verified by the proper officer, I submit that the burden of proof to establish that the land subject of the proceeding is unregistrable then shifts, as it should, to the State.
(a) By anyone who saw the document executed or written; or (b) By evidence of the genuineness of the signature or handwriting of the maker.
Any other private document need only be identified as that which it is claimed to be.
Endnotes:
1 578 Phil. 441 (2008).
2 Id. at 452-453.
3 G.R. No. 218269, June 6, 2018, accessed at <http://elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocs/1/64234>.
4 Under the Guidelines for the Assessment and Delineation of Boundaries Between Forestlands, National Parks and Agricultural Lands [DENR AO 2008-24, December 8, 2008], land classification maps are defined as those which show "the classification of lands of the public domain based on the land classification system undertaken by the then Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources, through the Bureau of Forestry, the Ministry of Natural Resources, through the Bureau of Forest Development, and the [DENR]."
5 757 Phil. 119 (2015). While the date of the CENRO certificate considered in Lualhati cannot be ascertained from the Court's decision, the fact that the same had been issued prior to the effectivity of DENR AO 2012-9 can be inferred from the date of the RTC and CA rulings assailed therein, that is, October 4, 2005 and March 31, 2008, respectively.
6 G.R. No. 181435, October 2,2017, 841 SCRA 328. While the date of the CENRO certificate considered in Nicolas cannot be ascertained from the Court's decision, the fact that the same had been issued prior to the effectivity of DENR AO 2012-9 can be inferred from the date of the RTC and CA rulings assailed therein, that is, July 31, 2002 and August 23, 2007, respectively.
7 BFDAOs declaring portions of the public forest as alienable and disposable are issued under the signature of the Secretary of Natural Resources upon the recommendation of the Director of the Bureau of Forest.
8 The BFDAO usually contains the following language:
x x x Pursuant to Section 13 of PD 705, otherwise known as the Revised Forestry Code of the Philippines, as amended, I hereby declare an aggregate area of [x x x] hectares, more or less, as alienable or disposable for cropland and other purposes and place the same under the control and management of the Bureau of Lands, for disposition pursuant to the provisions the Public Land Act, located in [x x x], shown and described in BFD Map [x x x], which is attached hereto and forms and integral part of this Order x x x[.]
9 RULES OF COURT, Rule 132, Sec. 23 states:
Section 23. Public documents as evidence. — Documents consisting of entries in public records made in the performance of a duty by a public officer are prima facie evidence of the facts stated therein. All other public documents are evidence, even against a third person, of the fact which gave rise to their execution and of the date of the latter.
10 In fact, in Victoria v. Republic, 666 Phil. 519 (2011), the Court ordered the OSG to directly undertake the verification and authentication of documentary evidence belatedly presented by the petitioner in the interest of justice. In Victoria, a certain Natividad Sta. Ana Victoria (Natividad) applied for the original registration of a 1,729-square meter lot in Bambang, Taguig City before the Metropolitan Trial Court (MeTC). The MeTC granted Natividad's application, prompting the Republic to file an appeal. When Natividad filed her Appellee's Brief, she attached thereto a Certification dated November 6, 2006 issued by the DENR certifying that the Bambang lot formed part of the alienable and disposable land of the public domain.
The CA held that Natividad failed to prove that the Bambang lot was alienable and disposable, and thus, granted the Republic's appeal. The CA held that it could not take cognizance of the DENR Certification since Natividad failed to offer it in evidence during the hearing before the MeTC.
Aggrieved, Natividad filed a petition for review before the Court. Resolving Natividad's petition, the Court observed that "the only reason the CA gave in reversing the decision of the MeTC is that [Natividad] failed to submit the [DENR Certification] x x x during the hearing x x x." Accordingly, the Court issued a resolution "requiring the OSG to verify from the DENR whether the Senior Forest Management Specialist of its National Capital Region, Office of the Regional Technical Director for Forest Management Services, who issued the [DENR Certification], is authorized to issue certifications on the status of public lands as alienable and disposable, and to submit a copy of the administrative order or proclamation that declares as alienable and disposable the area where the property involved in this case is located, if any there be."
In compliance, the OSG submitted: (i) a certification confirming the Senior Forest Management Specialist's authority to issue said DENR Certification; and (ii) a certified true copy of Forestry Administrative Order 4-1141 dated January 3, 1968, signed by then Secretary of Agriculture and Natural Resources Arturo R. Tanco, Jr., which declared portions of the public domain covered by Bureau of Forestry Map LC-2623, as alienable and disposable. Considering that LC-2623 covered the Bambang lot, the Court granted the petition for review, and in turn, granted Natividad's application for registration.
11 Providing for the Reorganization of the Department of Environment, Energy and Natural Resources, Renaming It as the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, and For Other Purposes, dated June 10, 1987.
12See id. at Sec. 5 (d).
13See id. at Sec. 7 (b).
14See id. at Sec. 7 (c).
15See id. at Sec. 7 (e).
16 EO 192 was issued by then President Corazon Aquino pursuant to her law-making powers prior to the convention of Congress on July 27, 1987. See generally Philippine Association of Service Exporters, Inc. v. Torres, 296-A Phil. 427 (1993).