“…Do not fret because of those who are evil or be envious of those who do wrong; for like the grass they will soon wither, like green plants they will soon die away…” –Proverbs 37:1-2

In a matter of hours, after a fire of undetermined origin, razed several buildings in the heart of Binondo, Manila, there appeared a highly noticeable trend in news reports regarding the calamity which tried to draw attention to the damage sustained by one of the buildings that went up in smoke, the National Archives. I suspect this trend was an attempt to manipulate the public’s perception of the fire.

Yes, it may be true that significant mementos of our country’s history, which were necessarily stored in the archives, were destroyed because of the fire but, the truth is, what should really be bothering the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte about this fire are the documents in the Land Management Bureau files, which appeared to have also perished. The fire broke out in the bureau’s offices in the wee hours of the morning of Monday, May 28.

This is because, at this point, records for all the land in the Philippines – those allowed to be owned by private parties and others which remain incapable of earning a title under the names of any private person – are in the custody of the Land Management Bureau. Now that all of these records appear to have been burned, we should expect graver land disputes throughout the country in days to come; in a manner that would be worse than the disputes we have now.

Binondo fire must be thoroughly probed

I am asking the president to immediately direct Justice Secretary Meynardo Guevarra to undertake a no-nonsense investigation into the fire, employing the expertise and the proven investigative capability of the National Bureau of Investigation.

The fire raises serious and grave doubts about its origin, especially because it happened as the Duterte government is moving towards the confiscation of land which, although incapable of being registered in favor of private owners under existing laws, have nevertheless been appropriated and are now being used for businesses, and other personal purposes, by the rich and the powerful, including politicians.

Some well-known examples include those in Boracay; Coron, Palawan; the Fortune and Verde islands; and some 100 or so more places. These lands are still “unclassified public forests,” according to the Supreme Court, and, consequently, cannot be appropriated or owned and used by any private person. Yet, these locales have been the source of hundreds of millions in illicit revenue for the unscrupulous and corrupt for quite a long time now.

Corrupt landowners to benefit from the Binondo fire

Now that the Land Management Bureau’s records have been destroyed, greater economic benefits will be enjoyed by the people who possess the lands still considered “unclassified public forest.” It would be very difficult to evict them from the land now, simply because any proof showing they are still owned by the government has been destroyed.

We should not forget, with the kind of system that our country employs, requests for lost or destroyed government documents will take decades before such documents are recovered or restored – if ever. It is not far-fetched to believe the documents may not be restored or that the government, in the long run, will simply lose interest in such restoration processes.

This endeavor to restore burned documents is now a “mission impossible” for the government and I am betting the rich and the powerful, who are currently reaping hundreds of millions of pesos in undeserved revenue from the lands in question, wouldn’t even want to give them up at this point. Yes, the country and the people are the only ones who will suffer for this.

As it is often said, “Only in the Philippines.”

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