Camp John Hay, nestled 5,000 feet in the mountains of Baguio City, used to be the premier rest and recreation center of U.S. forces in the Philippines. The log cabins occupy 31 hectares of what was once a pine-covered and restricted portion of the camp, where the Voice of America transmitter once stood.
The owners of the cabins are President Estrada's closest friends and business cronies: Philippine Airlines Chairman Lucio Tan, BW Resources chairman Dante Tan, plastics king William Gatchalian, businessmen Jacinto Ng, Lucio Co, who runs duty-free shops, and Enrique Razon, who monopolizes the contracts to service the country's ports. Actor Fernando Poe Jr also owns a cabin, supposedly a gift from the President.
Other cabin owners can now be considered former friends, among them Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. president Manuel Pangilinan, who was seen attending the anti-Estrada rally earlier this month, and former Speaker Manuel Villar, who presided over the impeachment of President Estrada last week.
"Those who were there felt they had no choice," said a businessman present at the gathering.
The log homes are in various stages of construction, except for Log Home # 1, which was recently completed. They are built entirely from imported Canadian cedar wood and cost at least P40 million each, unfurnished. A conservative estimate of the interiors and furnishings, real estate brokers here say, is P7 million.
ABS-CBN's "Correspondents" crew, which recently toured the presidential cabin, found a grand piano, expensive furnishings, and a spacious, state-of-the-art kitchen.
The houses are said to be replicas of the log cabin on 31 Paterno St, the much-talked about Baguio resthouse owned by Baguio Leisure Corporation, another company owned by the Zamoras. President Estrada and mistress Guia Gomez use the Paterno log cabin when they are in Baguio. Real estate agents say all the log cabins are designed and built by RR Payumo architects and JJS Construction, a firm partly owned by presidential friend Jaime Dichaves.
"It's plain and simple cronyism," said retired judge Braulio Yaranon, IBA spokesperson. "People close to Malacañang are given the privilege to enjoy John Hay while ordinary Baguio residents are shut out."
With the President's support for the project, the CJHDEVCO started to build at the Voice of America compound, even if Article I, Section 2 of the lease agreement between CJHDEVCO and the government's Bases Conversion Development Authority (BCDA) excludes protected forest areas such as the VOA compound from the 246 hectares that the company is leasing in Camp John Hay.
CJHDEVCO insists its entry into the VOA compound is legal. The company claims that some parts of the lease area could not be developed because there were existing communities. The VOA development, they said, was part of the land swap agreement to make up for the areas that CJHDEVCO could not touch.
But the supposed land swap deal, contained in a Memorandum of Agreement, was signed only on June 1, 2000 when construction was already underway. The agreement says the VOA area was being developed in exchange for CJHDEVCO's failure to develop four unusable portions of the lease area.
The city government, according to the 25-year renewal lease agreement between CJHDEVCO and the Bases Conversion Development Authority (BCDA), gets 25 percent or P106.25 million of the annual lease payment for use in development projects.
Earlier, Federico Alquiros, CJHDEVCO general manager, said they asked BCDA for a moratorium on lease payments because the BCDA had failed to deliver some portions of the original lease area and government agencies did not immediately issue the necessary permits for development.
Judge Yaranon believes that CJHDEVCO asked for a reprieve because of insolvency. He noted that Fil-Estate, a major partner of the CJHDEVCO consortium, is suffering from maturing debt obligations. It needs the John Hay project as a bargaining chip to persuade its creditors to extend its loans.
Yaranon also cannot understand how CJHDEVCO could be given a moratorium on payments when Mimosa Resort at Clark Airbase, a similar project, was ejected when its delinquent rentals reached P325 million. Worst, despite its delinquency, BCDA decided to tap cash-strapped Fil-Estate to develop and lease 233 hectares of the 800-hectare Poro Point Special Economic and Freeport Zone in San Fernando, La Union.
BCDA late last year contracted a Fil-Estate-led Filipino-Belgian consortium to develop 233 hectares of the 800-hectare Poro Point Special Economic and Freeport Zone in exchange for a 24-year lease. The consortium is composed of CJHDEVCO, Bulk Handlers Incorporated and IPEM of Belgium.
"How can a company that asked for a moratorium in paying its lease be tapped to infuse a large amount of money on another project?" Yaranon asked.
The DENR declared Camp John Hay a forest and watershed reservation on June 29, 1993, one of eight forest reserves and watershed areas in Baguio City.
In April this year, the CJHDEVCO admitted having felled 77 pine trees in the Voice of America compound. Non-governmental organizations have lambasted the DENR for giving the company a permit to cut trees. Fredric Villanueva, DENR regional Environmental Management Bureau (EMB) chief, said the permit was granted by the EMB's main office in Quezon City. This was irregular, as such permits should be given by the regional DENR office rather than the head office in Manila.
Baguio environmentalists point out that under the Bases Conversion Development Act, tree cutting in military reservations is allowed only to prevent forest fires. Moreover, residents say they were never consulted about the development of the VOA area and its adverse impact on surrounding communities. Directly affected by the development of the VOA compound are the neighboring communities of Loakan-Apugan, Loakan proper and Happy Hollow.
In CJHDEVCO's case, they say, the DENR granted at least two tree-cutting permits: one to convert the Camp John Hay golf course into an international Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course, and another to clear the VOA area.
The DENR issued a permit to cut the trees in February this year, when CJHDV had yet to be granted an environmental clearance certificate (ECC) to develop the area. The ECC was approved only three months later, on May 26, 2000 and it required CJHDEVCO to conduct a 100 percent inventory of trees within the VOA compound. By then, the trees had already been cut.
What is also questionable about the ECC is the fact that it was approved on the same day that CJHDEVCO filed its ECC application. DENR receipts issued to the company showed that the ECC was granted on May 26, 2000, the same day application for the clearance was submitted to the department.
It is not clear whether the Housing and Land Urban Regulatory Board (HLURB) has issued the necessary permits as of today. As of November 6, 2000, CJHDEVCO did not have and had not applied for a certificate of registration and license to sell from the Cordillera HLURB. Cordillera HLURB officials here said all John Hay papers including the VOA applications were sent to its Manila office.
"Hands-off na kami diyan, (This is not in our hands anymore)" said a high official of the Cordillera HLURB. "We should have been the ones to recommend action on these papers. But we were told that since the John Hay project is a national project, then HLURB Manila should take care of this."
It also appears that CJHDEVCO violated local government regulations on the construction of buildings or residences. On April 10, the Baguio City engineer's office issued Building Permit 20-00-000237 for the construction of a total of 70 log cabins inside Camp John Hay. Forty-five of these were to be located at the former Commander's Area while the remaining 25 are the VOA log cabins. Under local government rules, developers must secure one building permit for every structure being built.
A CJHDEVCO document showed that the company sold or reserved the VOA log cabins to the cronies even before it was granted the right to develop the area. The VOA Log Homes Project Executive Brief as of November 30, 1999-six months before the ECC was issued-showed that 16 log cabins were either sold to or reserved by:
Eight log homes were listed as "open" while another was reserved by CJHDEVCO itself.
A project status report as of July 31, 2000 showed that lots inside the VOA compound were turned over to the buyers even before the CJHDEVCO was granted an ECC and a permit to enter the VOA area.
Photos courtesy of ABS-CBN’s “The Correspondents.”
H O M E |
who we are | what we do | i on the net | e-community | e-bookshop
by LUZ RIMBAN and MIKE F. LEONEN
A PROTECTED forest inside the former U.S. military base Camp John Hay was cut down to make way for an exclusive enclave of 25 log cabins built especially for President Joseph Estrada and 15 of his cronies. The construction of the cabins, which cost at least P40 million each, violated environmental and building regulations.
The biggest house is Log Home # 1 listed under the name of Manta Equities Inc., a San Juan-based real estate company owned by the family of presidential friend Manuel Zamora. The cabin sits on the highest spot in the area and is nearest the helipad. People here say that last month the President stayed in the house accompanied by controversial friend Charlie 'Atong' Ang, the brains behind the Bingo 2-Ball gambling operation.
Various sources say the idea for the exclusive cabins came from presidential friend Robert John Sobrepeña, chairman and chief executive office of Camp John Hay Development Corporation (CJHDEVCO). President Estrada himself presented the project at a dinner hosted by Sobrepeña in a hotel in Manila late last year. There, the president told his friends about the cabins and asked them to each buy one.
Cronyism Charges
The Independent Baguio Alliance (IBA), a local political group opposed to the conversion of John Hay as a tourism estate, said the John Hay project is anomalous and borders on cronyism.
Documents show that the construction of the homes at the Voice of America compound could be illegal. Its developer, CJHDEVCO, also violated environmental laws and building regulations to speed up construction of the exclusive enclave. CJHDEVCO is a partnership between Fil-Estate Management Inc. and Pentacapital Investment Corporation.
Defaulting on Payments
In recent years, the Baguio city council has grown suspicious of the John Hay development due to the consortium's inability to pay the government an annual lease of P425 million.
Councilors Richard Cariño and Lilia Yaranon said CJHDEVCO's unpaid accounts grew to P1.275 billion, covering payments due for 1998, 1999 and 2000. CJHDEVCO was able to pay its annual obligation only in 1997, a year after it signed the John Hay lease agreement.
Violating the Rules
CJHDEVCO also violated Executive Order 62, the implementing policies and guidelines for Republic Act 7227 otherwise known as the Bases Conversion and Development Act of 1992. EO 62 imposes a ban on cutting trees in military reservations and extensions.
Flouting Local Government Rules
A project status report of the VOA Log Homes showed that some of the lots had been turned over and payments made as of the middle of this year. The Voice of America log homes are covered by 50-year leases that will end in October 2046.
.
Copyright © 2000 All rights reserved.
PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
