This is regarding a news item that came out with the across-the-page headline, “SC grants Bulacan folk relief in fight vs dump” (Page A3, 3/4/12).
While your reporter wrote a fairly accurate account of the Supreme Court’s en banc resolution, the headline deliberately and maliciously twisted the resolution’s real meaning and implication. The result: It looked like the petitioners got what they wanted when in reality their petition was very subtly denied by the high court.
The petitioners, a handful of residents of Obando, Bulacan, claiming to be environmentalists, had asked the Supreme Court to stop, through a court order, the construction of an engineered sanitary landfill in Barangay Salambao in Obando.
They also asked the high court to issue a temporary environmental protection order (Tepo) on the alleged ground that the construction and operation of the landfill would cause an ecological disaster.
But the Supreme Court actually held in abeyance the issuance of a Tepo. It also tossed back the petition to the Court of Appeals with the instruction to hear out the respondents, who are out to disprove the petitioners’ preposterous claims.
The Supreme Court must have duly noted, and given weight to, the fact that Ecoshield Development Corp.’s project had been duly approved and was being endorsed by both the national and local governments for being a state-of-the-art landfill. (Even the 1,620 residents of Barangay Salambao, the landfill site, are enthusiastically endorsing it. They see the project as the solution to their economic woes.)
The fact that Environment Secretary Ramon Paje, Bulacan Gov. Wilhelmino Sy-Alvarado (and the majority of the provincial board), and Obando Mayor Orencio Gabriel are among the prominent personalities named as respondents must have given the high court reason to pause.
From our vantage point, we can see that there is at least one business group headed by a controversial land developer who fears the emergence of Ecoshield’s landfill. We have it on good authority that this is the same group instigating and bankrolling all the negative publicity being whipped up by shady characters calling themselves environmentalists.
It’s incredible how a mere handful of ordinary Obando residents can have the logistics for a sustained media campaign against something that the highest government regulators have officially approved. We will identify this group when we file the appropriate lawsuits against it.
—FRANCO C. OCO,
legal counsel,
Ecoshield Development Corp.
There was nothing wrong with the headline. The issuance of a writ of kalikasan may be considered a form of relief, even if the temporary environmental protection order was not issued outright. As for the allegation of impropriety attending the writing of the headline, we simply do not work that way.—Ed.