Mayor Magdaleno Peña maintains that the roads in Pulupandan town where he has set up outposts to prevent certain people from passing through are privately owned and will stay, Inspector Joshua Villasis, Pulupandan police chief, said yesterday.

At a coordinating conference of the Commission on Elections, Philippine National Police and Armed Forces of the Philippines at the Capitol in Bacolod City Friday Villasis asked Provincial Election Officer Jessie Suarez how to handle outposts set up on privately owned roads in Pulupandan where selected persons are barred from passing

Suarez said that if the roads had been used for public access in the past, then the power of eminent domain exists and owners will have to get a Temporary Restraining Order from the court to bar people from entry.

Villasis said he was told that the persons prohibited to pass through the private road lots are members of the Mondia family and their “cohorts” who, according to Peña, are responsible for the 2007 failed ambush committed against him.

Shortly after the 2007 elections Peña’s convoy was ambushed in Pulupandan leaving him and three others injured, and two of his companions dead. The New People’s Army claimed responsibility for the ambush, but Peña has insisted that the Mondias were involved, a charge which they have repeatedly denied.

The mayor said he cannot allow his property to be used by the Mondias and the NPAs who pose a threat to his personal safety and security, and he cannot allow them to use his road lots as strategic routes so that they can ambush him again, Villasis said.

In 2007 businessman Samson Mondia ran against Peña for mayor and lost, and his brother former town mayor Luis Mondia Jr. is running against the mayor in this year’s polls.

Villasis, in a press statement yesterday, said that immediately after the coordinating conference on Friday he relayed to the local government unit the opinion of Suarez and was clarified that the outposts stationed along road lots in Pulupandan are private constructions which the LGU cannot dismantle without violating property rights of its owners.

Thus, Villasis said, for clarification he is informing the public that the road lots where the outposts were constructed are privately owned up to the present considering that they were not donated by the owners to Pulupandan or sold to the LGU through voluntary sale or expropriation proceedings.

As advised by the LGU, the power of eminent domain pointed out by Suarez only takes effect if the LGU expropriates the road lots and this entails the filing of the necessary action in court, he said.

Villasis said he was told, no action of this kind has been filed up to this date.

Villasis also said he was informed that in order for the road lots to be publicly-owned there should be a title in favor of Pulupandan.

“Road right-of-way or title thereto cannot be obtained through continuous public use considering that prescription cannot run against properties covered by a Torrens title,” Villasis said he was told.

As one of the road lot owners, the mayor claimed that under Article 429 of the New Civil Code, the landowner has the right to protect his property and incidental to his rights as property owner is the right to exclude any person from it, Villasis said in his press statement.*CPG

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