THE SORRY STATE OF LAND

AND STUPID LAND SYSTEM

IN THE PHILIPPINES

By: Arnulfo Yu Laniba

Agape Foundation (Agasoft)

1
 THE SORRY STATE OF LAND AND LAND SYSTEM IN THE
PHILIPPINES
By: Arnulfo Yu Laniba
Agape Foundation (Agasoft)

May I give you a bigger perspective so you will be a little

bit wiser?
The total land area of the Philippines is 30 million
hectares.
The First Half
1/2 of it or 15 million hectares are land titled, distributed.
But very large part of this first half is owned by few rich men, a
huge organization (the Roman Catholic Church) and
corporations.
This first half is mostly plains and valleys. The largest
land owner within this first half is the Roman Catholic Church
especially the Jesuits, but have already transferred the
ownership to their corporations to hide their ancient crime of
the largest land grabbing through deceit.
This hidden huge land holding of the Catholic Church is
known as friar land.
This first half of the Philippine land is already ridden by
injustices and stupidity in that some owns 1,000s of hectares
while many heirs are allowed to keep dividing what is smaller
than 5 hectares. This is stupidity.
Dividing the less than 5 hectares
There is a point when dividing a lot does not anymore
sustain each recipient and that I think is when each share is
less than 5 hectares. A wise government ought to stop dividing
a land if it is only 5 hectares. It must allow that land to be

2
owned by one heir only and the rest of the landless heirs be
given free land by the government!
The point is: each family to survive and need no second
source of income, must have at least 5 hectares.
Bones are source of contention or quarrels
There is a saying on quarreling over bones. It goes like
this, Bukog na, giawayan pa. It is true. According to a
surveyor, most family and clan quarrels that are serious and
oftentimes led to litigation and the ones which led to homicides
is the quarrel over the inheritance lot that is already too small
for one share but is still expected to be divided among so many
recipients (e.g., children and grandchildren, or even great
grandchildren)!
A wise nation and people as well as lawmakers should
have stopped at 5 hectares, and any family lot that measures
only 5 hectares should not be subdivided anymore but be given
to just one recipient, e.g., the youngest, and then the rest
should be given free 5-hectare lots from the government. We
can do that because we, the people, are the government. If our
elected officials represent us truly, then, that is possible,
because half of our countrys land is still undistributed and that
half is ideal for orchards to complement our crop-based first
half. It is not true that we do not have vacant land anymore.
Half of the country is still undistributed. And it is not true that
the remaining land is difficult to till; only 4% of it is real forest,
the rest is clean grassland and easy timberland. Furthermore, in
this era of bulldozer and backhoes, there is not land that cannot
be developed and transformed into beautiful as well as very
productive farm.
The Inheritance Law as a means to legally land
grab

3
 Besides the discouragement that pervades among 46
grandchildren dividing among themselves 8 hectares of their
grandfather and ending up with a size that only is good for a
house but cannot be farmed to feed each family sufficiently, we
also have another stupid law called inheritance law which
orders the heirs to report to the government the death of their
grandfather in a given deadline, otherwise, they, the heirs, will
suffer an inheritance tax that keeps on multiplying like a loan
with a compounded interest!
So that within their 10-year deadline to pay, which usually
transpires because the heirs are left ignorant about this law, so
they end up receiving a notice at the end of the 10th year of
non-payment of the inheritance tax - a notice which states
that (1) their inheritance tax has grown to P75,000 and that (2)
in the given time, they must pay it or else the government will
seize the land and sell it at an auction which gives a price so
low that it is almost like giving it away to.... the friends and
relatives of the politicians and businessmen....
The land of the grandfather or any other land so hard to
acquire and the men inside the government using their cunning
inheritance law are able to seize so many lots from the poor
people in a span of every 10 years!
Brood vipers and snakes!
And these seized lots get into the hands of friends and
relatives of politicians in an auction that gives these lots at very
low price, e.g., P1,000.00 per hectare!
Shameless wicked men!
Legal land grabbing in one hand, hiding the good
law in the other hand
And at the same time, they keep from the people another
law which is the real law, because it is the good law, though it is
not perfect and needs refinement, nevertheless it contains
4
some provisions that gives life to the people and can keep the
nations families intact -- its name is The Commonwealth Act
141 (Public Land Act or Homestead Law) which provides free
land to the landless up to 24 hectares free from the
government!
The Second Half of the Countrys Land
The second half of our countrys land area is 15 million
hectares, mostly hills, some mountains, a good size is
grassland, only about 4 is real forest. Not difficult to develop
into FOOD FOREST or orchard.
This second half is very ideal for fruit trees. The higher or
steeper the slope of a hill or mountain, the better for fruit trees
because of the sun can shine direct to the trees and the trees
can be planted in closer spacing in stair-way method, whereas
planting fruit trees in plains requires a wide distance of 15 to 20
meters apart to guarantee that none of these trees touch each
other in later years.
Do you know that while they are grabbing the first half of
the total land via many means including the deceptive
inheritance tax law, they are also keeping to themselves the
other half by leasing it to only few relative families at 400
hectares per family, at only P1.00 of rent per hectare per year,
when in truth, it is for the landless poor who have nowhere to
sleep, but sleeping in cemeteries and under the bridges!
The Commonwealth Act 141 which our forefathers crafted
made sure that we, the heirs, would not end up landless and
squatters in our own land!
But what has happened? What did the Executive Branch
composed of the president, governors, mayors and barangay
captains do?
The Executive Branch (from president to governor to
mayor to barangay captain) was established to implement the
5
laws, especially those laws which give life to our people, not
suck them to death!
The Commonwealth Act 141 was enacted into law in 1936
and ought to have seen the entire land equally distributed to its
inhabitants. But who was the good president who had
implemented it, namely: granted 24 hectares to the landless
heirs?
No one of them had done it!
Why is the huge second half leased to the few families,
already landed and rich, at an average of 400 per family at
P1.00 per hectare per year, have them feel rich after they had
converted such a huge land into ranch, orchard, or pineapple
plantations - while in the cities and many places, millions do not
have space to sleep?
Huge Catholic church landholdings hidden in the
first half
There is a guy in the internet who commented "It is OK to
be squatters in your own country." What happens now to the
Lord's charge: 'Feed the hungry, give shelter to the family-less,
homeless or landless...." (Matthew 25)?
Many all these years have been blaming and accusing our
landless squatters for land grabbing. I am not accusing the
present recent batch of priests who did not do it, but do you
know that the past batch of priests in our Catholic Church
those named the friars and mostly Spaniards or of Spanish
blood - are or were the biggest thieves and land grabbers of all
time? using the deceptive doctrine of hilog to lure, pressure
or threaten the dying man to give up his farm to donate it to
the Church otherwise his soul would go to hell (which is a lie).
And even if the dying man would refuse, the priest would
tell the wife and children that he saw the soul of her husband
going the direction of hell, to threaten the wife to say, Father
6
what shall we do? And the priest would answer: "This trip to hell
cannot be prevented except by a mass or prayer by the whole
people led by the priest"
And the wife says, "OK, father, I ask you to hold a mass as
soon as possible."
The priest: "OK, tomorrow we will have a special mass for
the soul of your husband. But..." "
What father?"
But mass prayer is not enough if you won't do a sacrifice
or give the best offering."
"What is that father?"
If the wife and daughters are beautiful, the priest would
say, "This hidden sin of your husband needs that you and your
daughters enter the convent to serve God as nuns to serve as
sacrifice for your husband... And... that you will donate your fat
fertile land to the Church".
Thus the huge landholdings of the Roman Catholic Church
named as friar land. To further keep this harder to locate by
the public, the Jesuits had moved these landholdings to the
corporations they had created.
Brethren, this is what I term hilog deception that has
resulted to the loss of so many fertile lands of the innocent
people.
Truth is truth even if no one believes it. Lie is a lie even if
everyone believes it.
What shall we do now?
Landlessness is having a piece of land that is less than
enough to feed a family without the need for another source of
income.

7
 Enough land means to have enough size of land as well
as sufficient quality to produce at least the minimum needs of
the family.
There are secret books more purer and more authoritative
than the Bible, and superior in both love and wisdom or
intelligence than the Catholic and Protestant bibles, many
volumes, that the church leaders have kept from our reach
because they contain the things they do not want us to know
because when we know them, they would not be able to control
us and keep us poor, weak and disabled and they would not be
able to grab our lands and other resources.
Among them, I have found in three books that clearly
stated that we should stop commercializing or putting a
monetary value of the basic and free gifts of God such as the
land stop buying and selling it and reset it back to the
original will of the Giver, namely: to give it free to all and
deprive no one, never allow that one has 1,000s of hectares
while the rest have less or none!
The first book is entitled The Household of God. There
God says, The land is Mine, and everything in it and under it
(e.g., the minerals). And He said that He will not forever
tolerate anyone who uses human laws to undermine His will for
all His children, namely: equal sharing so that each would enjoy
stability and prosperity.
The land grabbers have their end coming.
The second book is titled The Great Gospel according to
Jesus Christ thru John which is Jesus own version of the gospel,
as there is a gospel according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
In this 7,500-page book, He made it clear that He is not
happy with the one who claims and who claims more than he
can till or that which should be given to the landless ones.

8
 In a more recent message to a certain Neale Donald
Walsch in the United States, in the book God answered serious
questions including that of land ownership.
God made it clear that He did not allow land ownership as
we know it. He only allowed stewardship. So as stewards, we
cannot buy or sell or commercialize what we do not own.
Stewardship allows only the care as well as the equal sharing
and effective passing of the land to the next generation to
ensure equality, fairness, peace, lasting prosperity, freedom
and happiness all of which we lack under the system of
unlimited ownership as if it is really ours and as if there is no
love and as if the rest are not Gods children too and our
brothers and sisters and as if we can take the land with us into
the spirit world or when we leave this place to go beyond!
Stewardship, not ownership, ensures humility and
gratitude, guarantees justice, fairness and equality.
I am not the one saying this but a former Catholic
theologian based in Rome who wrote in a book that although
the Bible is not an evil book but after centuries of editing, it now
lacks important teachings after many popes ordered the
truncation (removal) and/or insertions that totaled as many as
250,000 errors (!) that resulted to our lack of many important
things such as those ones I mentioned above, namely: humility
and gratitude among so-called land owners; justice, fairness
and equality among us; peace, lasting prosperity, freedom and
happiness.
As a result of their editing unauthorized by God, what we
have aplenty are their opposites: quarrels within the clan or
family over the inheritance land, resulting poverty, slavery to
the employment system, and there is indeed a big lack of
happiness among the clan and member families who are left
with not enough land to till (not just dwell) to feed every family,
resulting to the most harmful of all decisions ever made by a

9
Filipino family: have the mother or in some cases, the father to
work abroad as OFWs.
I call that most harmful decisions because young
children were forced to be alone and became victims to drug
lords and pushers and immoral syndicates, resulting to the first
batch of drug addicts who are OFW children in majority,
resulting to the first batch of robbers-rapists-murderers
(heinous criminals), then resulting to the first batch of drug
pushers who pushed the number of drug addicts to over 5
million after they recruited the less moneyed non-OFW children!
These shabu addicted kids are dangers in waiting. They
are very dangerous because they are free and they are just
hiding in some dark corners of their rooms, and can strike
anytime anywhere and commit the next rape, the next murder,
the next robbery. Most of us do not see them; but they are real.
Real threats to the safety of our daughters, and sons, and
wives.
If we cannot address this social hemorrhage at the root,
then, we can see a near future when these 5 million addicts will
turn into full pledge drug pushers whose vice will push them
hard to recruit or victimize the remaining batch of our young
children and grand children so that the end result will be
worse!
The sounds of alarm
I saw it coming and repeatedly warned the country that
we should not continue with OFWism as the means to support
our own families.
The first alert signal for me was when I read the survey of
Gabriela which laid the fact that for every 20 Filipina OFWs, 19
of them or 95% got abused in many forms, including sexual
abuse and that a large majority of all OFWs are female or
women.

10
 That signaled to me the first danger.
The next sound of alarm was when I read some ten years
ago the statistics that majority of the countrys increasing
shabu drug addicts are children of the OFWs due to emotion
hole in their hearts that shabu offers relief.
The solutions
The solutions are simple, if just give enough focus and
invest enough thought, time and resources for them. They are
(in brief, I will discuss them later):
1. Genuine Land Reform; stop the fake land reforms.
Implement the law, The Commonwealth Act 141 to see
that each family would have at least 5 hectares of land;
2. Permaculture or Food Forest. Each family should
have a combination of crop farm and fruit tree farm.
Fruits, not crops, hold the key to long-term health and
long-term prosperity as well as better retirement. Fruits
should consist 75% of our meal, every meal. To miss it
means to miss youth, longevity and prosperity.
3. Nanay Balik Bahay. With enough land and properly
developed land, all wives and mothers should go home
to focus on their own small children, not children of
others in faraway lands! Those mothers should take
care of their own children, our wives should take care of
ours, they alone can do what the hens do every end of
the day: gather her chicks and cover them by her
strong wings and warmth to be protected from the
night wolves (e.g., drug pushers, etc.).
4. Talent-based education and business. We should
work to make talents (or where we or our children are
strong and inclined to) the basis and focus of our
education, formal and experience, as well as the
foundation of our businesses. We should remove the
education that diverts us from our own talents and we

11
 should also stop the present system where we go into
business that delist or undermine or does not fit to our
talents! Time must arrive when we have enough food,
shelter, and other basics that our farm can provide so
that each of us will not fear to spend as much needed
time to master their talents. Let the land be the
foundation of talent-based entrepreneurs and
enterprises.
5. Stop the present trend of travel to become maids and
start the trend to travel as tourist, learner or investor.
6. MORE COMPLETE SPIRITUAL MANUAL TO GUIDE OUR
CONSTITUTIONS AND HUMAN LAWS. The Holy Bible, if
you proved it to contain the 250,000 errors, would
make it a dull two-edged sword, no longer sharp, no
longer effective in very subtle issues and topics. It
already happened with the issue about land. It cannot
show us the way, cannot cut clear between what is
right and wrong, thus, the resulting blur or lack of
clarity, gave birth to severe abuses and worst cases of
land quarrels. The Bible is a victim, not a victimizer and
I am not here to condemn it, but to tell you that the
Bible with its gospels from Matthew, Mark, Luke and
John and epistles from Paul, Peter, et al, needs the
support of a higher power, namely: the Lord Jesus
Christ who said that with His Holy Spirit, as comforter,
He will send additional revelation to remind us all of His
teachings as well as to lead us into all the still missing
truths... and then, these truths shall set us free. That is
what is happening now with what I am sharing to you
regarding the issue and problem of the land. The same
thing will happen with other topics or issues. Freedom
will come.

Happiness, freedom and prosperity only can come from

12
13