Acuna v Arroyo

Acuna v Arroyo
G.R. No.79310
July 14, 1989

Facts:

RA No. 6657, otherwise known as the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law of 1988 was signed into law by then President Corazon Aquino. There were a number of legal questions challenging the constitutionality of the several measures enacted to implement the CARL.

In the instant case, the petitioners are landowners and sugar planters in the Victorias Mill District in Negros Occidental. Co-petitioner Planters’ Committee is an organization composed of 1,400 planter-members. This petition seeks to prohibit the implementation of Proclamation No. 131 and EO No. 229.

The petitioners claim that the power to provide for a CARP as decreed by the constitution belongs to Congress and not the President. Even assuming that the interim legislative power of the President was properly exercised, Proc. No. 131 and EO No. 229 would still have to be annulled for violating the constitutional provisions on just compensation, due process and equal protection.
Section 2 of Proc. No. 131 provides:

Agrarian Reform Fund.- There is hereby created a special fund, to be known as the Agriarian Reform Fund, an initial amount of FIFTY BILLION PEOS to cover the estimated cost of the CARP from 1987 -1992 which shall be sourced from the receipts of the sale of the assets of the Asset Privatization Trust and Receipts of sale of ill-gotten wealth received through the PCGG and such other sources as government may deem appropriate. The amounts collected and accruing to this special fund shall be appropriated automatically for the purpose authorized in this Proclamation. The money needed to cover the cost of the contemplated expropriated has yet to be raised and cannot be appropriated at this time.

Petitioners contend that taking must be simultaneous with payment of just compensation as it is traditionally understood, i.e., with money and in full, but no such payment is contemplated in Sec. 5 of EO No. 229.

The petitioners also argue that in the issuance of the two measures, no effort was made to make a careful study of the sugar planters’ situation. To the extent that the sugar planters have been lumped in the same legislation with other farmers, although they are a separate group with problems exclusively their own, their right to equal protection has been violated.

Issue:

Whether or not Proc. No. 31 and EO No. 229 are valid.

Held:

The Court upheld the presumption of constitutionality in favour of Proc. No. 131 and EO No. 229. Contrary to the petitioners’ contention, a pilot project to determine the feasibility of CARP and a general survey on the people’s opinion thereon are not indispensable prerequisites to its promulgation.

On the alleged violation of the equal protection clause, the sugar planters have failed to show that they belong to a different class and should be treated differently.

Regarding the issue of just compensation, it cannot be denied that the issue involved in the case is a revolutionary kind of expropriation.

The expropriation in the instant case affects all private agricultural lands whenever found and of whatever kind as long as they are in excess of the maximum retention limits allowed their owners. This kind of expropriation is intended for the benefit not only of a particular community but of the entire Filipino nation.

Such a program will involve not mere million of pesos. The cost will be tremendous. Considering the vast areas of land subject to expropriation under the laws before us, we estimate that hundreds of billions of pesos will be needed, far more indeed that the amount of P50 billion initially appropriated, which is already staggering as it is by our present standards.

We assume that the framers of the Constitution were aware of this difficulty when they called for agrarian reform as a top priority project of the government. It is a part of this assumption that when they envisioned the expropriation that would be needed, they also intended that the just compensation would have to be paid not in the orthodox way but a less conventional if more practical method. There can be doubt that they were aware of the financial limitations of the government and had no illusions that there would be enough money to pay in cash and in full for the lands they wanted to be distributed among the farmers. we may therefore assume that their intention was to allow such manner of payment as is now provided for by the CARP Law, particularly the payment of the balance, or indeed of the entire amount of the just compensation, with other things of value.

Accepting the theory that payment of the just compensation is not always required to be made fully in money, we further that the proportion of cash payment to the other things of value constituting the total payment, as determined on the basis of the areas of the lands expropriated, is not unduly oppressive upon the landowner.

Hence, the validity of Proc. No. 131 and EO No. 229 is SUSTAINED.

Acknowledgement: Flor Bonador