黑料社

BAGUIO CITY鈥擜aron Goodman, a 55-year-old New Zealand native, has made Camp John Hay his home, after investing P22 million of his savings in two Forest Cabins at the former American rest and recreation baseland.

But Goodman received on Monday a court-issued notice to vacate his two houses that would leave his Filipino family homeless.

He said he is putting up a fight, along with many other homeowners who intend to ask the court to stop the evictions.

鈥淚t鈥檚 not about the money. We鈥檝e made our home here. We don鈥檛 want to go,鈥� he said.

So do some of Goodman鈥檚 neighbors, who received their eviction notices on Wednesday from court sheriffs deployed on the second day of enforcing an arbitration judgment that was supposed to have resolved a contractual dispute between the administrator and the developer of Camp John Hay.

The notices were addressed to Camp John Hay Development Corp. (CJHDevco) and 鈥渁ll persons claiming rights under them,鈥� because a tribunal formed by the Philippine Dispute Resolution Center (PDRC) required the CJHDevco to return to the government its 240-hectare leased area and all its improvements.

It also ordered the Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA) to reimburse the developer its rent amounting to P1.42 billion, which the agency deposited in an escrow account it opened for a Baguio court.

The tribunal said both CJHDevco and BCDA have violated the 1996 lease agreement to develop a tourism complex at John Hay, and its only recourse is to void the lease and to 鈥渞evert [the property] as far as practicable to their original position prior to the execution of the original lease agreement.鈥�

鈥淚f the idea [propounded by the PDRC judgment] is to take everybody back to the original position [in Camp John Hay, as if the lease was never executed], the original position of the BCDA was not this,鈥� Goodman said, because Camp John Hay was composed of US military barracks when the Americans abandoned their bases in 1991.

鈥淭he truth is [government] will enrich itself by grabbing

everybody鈥檚 houses without any sort of compensation,鈥� given how the PDRC decision is being enforced, he said.

Both CJHDevco and BCDA have put up help desks to offer legal advise to sublessees ordered to leave John Hay.

Many homeowners rushed to the CJHDevco help desk, some still in their slippers, saying they were startled and confused about the notices delivered to them.

In an earlier statement, CJHDevco executive vice president Alfredo Y帽iguez III said the locators were protected under law as they have made their investments in good faith.

鈥淚t is possible for these investors to sue the BCDA if they are evicted since they are protected under the law and governed by the law of contracts and obligations,鈥� Y帽iguez said.

These locators are considered vested rights holders and were buyers in good faith,鈥� he said.

In the same statement, CJHDevco legal counsel Gilbert Reyes said it was actually BCDA that benefited from the payments made by investors.

鈥淏CDA used the investors鈥� hard-earned investments to discharge its obligation to pay interest to CJHDevCo. It, therefore, does not require too much imagination to see why it is plainly wrong for the BCDA to accept the benefit of using the investment of third parties to pay for its debt,鈥� said Reyes.

A few were outraged by the fact that the feuding parties failed to protect them from the conflict.

Goodman said many investors had not even been informed about the dispute and the problems plaguing the John Hay Special Economic Zone (JHSEZ).

A John Hay Business Club was developed to shield tenants from the feud by providing them a neutral venue to jointly market Camp John Hay, according to Zaldy Bello, JHSEZ zone manager, in an earlier interview.

The PDRC ruling, however, impacted negatively on Camp John Hay鈥檚 residents and business operations because it did not detail how their contracts would thrive after the original lease agreement was voided, said lawyer Federico Mandapat, who mans the CJHDevco Help Desk. With a report by Jerome C. Aning in Manila