THE Supreme Court has upheld the merger of two barangays in Calaca, Batangas, which has been the subject of a long-standing legal dispute that started in the late 1990s.
In a 28-page decision promulgated on April 7, the Court en banc affirmed the abolition of Barangay San Rafael and its merger with Barangay Dacanlao.
The en banc reversed and set aside a resolution of the Court of Appeals and declared void Provincial Ordinance No. 2, which repealed an earlier Sangguniang Panlalawigan Ordinance abolishing San Rafael.
“Ordinance No. 2 must be struck down for being void. It cannot repeal Ordinance No. 5, which enjoys the presumption of validity regardless of its actual implementation, and which may only be amended or repealed by another valid law,” said the ruling penned by Chief Justice Alexander Gesmundo.
The row started in 1997 when the Sangguniang Panlalawigan abolished Barangay San Rafael and merged it with Barangay Dacanlao, a move that the majority of voters supported in a 1998 plebiscite.
The regional trial court upheld the merger after it was challenged by some residents. This ruling was later challenged before the Court of Appeals.
In 2009, the Sanggunian Panlalawigan reversed the merger and restored Barangay San Rafael.
With the enactment of the second ordinance, the appellate court junked the appeal of the residents, saying the issue was already moot.
The validity of the second ordinance, however, was challenged before the trial court on the argument that it did not follow the legal requirements for creating a new local government unit.
The trial and appellate courts both rejected the petition, explaining that the second ordinance did not actually create a new barangay as Barangay San Rafael was already in existence.
But in its ruling, the SC noted that the new ordinance did not include a plebiscite and lacked a certification from the Philippine Statistics Authority that Barangay San Rafael has a minimum population of 2,000 as required by the Local Government Code.
“To allow Ordinance No. 2 to simply repeal Ordinance No. 5 by reasoning that the latter lacked the requirement of a plebiscite, would be to turn a blind eye to the existence of the February 28, 1998 plebiscite, and by extension, ignoring the will of the people, which had already been made known through such plebiscite,” the SC ruling added.
