Sketching a sunburst on the upper arm of a tourist sitting on the white sands of idyllic Boracay, tattoo artist Frederick Casilao admits his mind is more focussed on local property values.
"Before, a lot of people were interested in buying" beachfront acreage, says Casilao, whose family has a plot of land for sale. "Now, no one is."
To most people, this tiny island on the central Philippines is a tropical paradise, drawing nearly half a million visitors last year to its pristine beaches.
PHOTO: AFP
But a bitter dispute between the national government and thousands of local resort owners and residents could change all that.
The state has warned that as much as 90 percent of the 1,002-hectare island is not covered by land titles, meaning the government could sell off the land -- much of it occupied -- as it pleases.
This would put under a cloud the many millions of dollars invested in luxurious resorts for the wealthy as well as humbler establishments offering dormitory-style rooms to budget travellers.
Environment Secretary Michael Defensor, the government's point man in the Boracay land dispute that has now reached the Supreme Court, has become a hated figure in this island of 13,000 people.
"We don't know what will happen but people will fight through lawful means. This is land we're talking about. People will hang onto this. They are not letting anybody take it away," says Boracay Mayor Ciceron Cawaling.
Boracay residents have won a ruling from the appelate court, the country's second highest court, saying that they are entitled to own land on the island. Secretary Defensor has appealed the case to the Supreme Court, which still has to rule on the matter.
Defensor argues that the island's land ownership system must be formalized to enable investors to borrow money and to allow for better regulation of the expanding tourism industry here.
In early June hundreds of residents marched onto the streets of Boracay against Defensor. Even the local government of Boracay has taken an adversarial stance, issuing a position paper against the secretary.
"He cannot just take over the island. The people have invested blood and sweat on this island. We will fight to the last," says Anita Aguirre, a local who owns the Boracay Plaza Beach Resort.
There are over 300 registered businesses on the island, ranging from five-star country clubs to tiny shops and restaurants all catering to tourists, says the mayor.
About 458,000 tourists visited the island last year, at least 30 percent of them foreigners, says Cawaling, adding that he expects the number of tourists to hit half a million this year.
The national government collected 7.8 billion pesos (US$143.4 million) from taxes on Boracay tourist establishments last year, Cawaling points out, not counting local taxes and other indirect financial benefits.
Zoilo Anding, a special assistant to Defensor, has told resort owners the government aims to "provide security and stability to the people of Boracay through the issuance of land titles", and to "preserve the beauty of the island for future generations."
But to issue land titles most of the island must first be declared as "alienable and disposable land" which can then be sold off -- or in rare cases, granted to private individuals, Anding said.
However Boracay residents say the government's plan could result in their having to buy back land they already consider to be their own -- or worse, have it sold out from under them.
They charge that they are victims of a discriminatory policy imposed by then-dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 1978, six years after he had declared martial law.
Ironically, during a visit to the island, Marcos was so taken by its beauty that he declared Boracay and several other islands as special "tourist zones," preventing even the residents from getting titles to their lands.
Boracay largely remained undeveloped up to the mid-1980s, when a bloodless popular revolt in Manila ended Marcos' 20-year rule. While local and foreign tourists did travel to Boracay to lie on the white sands and swim in the crystal-clear waters, its facilities were threadbare: just wooden huts without electricity or telephone lines that attracted mainly hardy backpackers.
It was only in the late-1980s that the island really began taking off as a vacation spot. Upper-end hotels and resorts were set up and power, telephone and water connections were established with the nearby large island of Panay.
Orlando Sacay, a former member of the Marcos cabinet who sold his ancestral home and all his other assets elsewhere in the country to open a resort in Boracay seven years ago, is now one of the most vocal opponents of the government titling plan.
"We invested millions, we took a risk and we are the ones that made Boracay what it is," says Sacay, owner of the Waling-Waling Resort and vice-president of the Boracay Foundation, an advocacy group that is fighting the national government plan.
"The thought that you have to buy your land all over again is totally unacceptable to the people of Boracay," he adds.
The stances of the two opposing camps have hardened after some harsh exchanges in the Philippine media. Supporters of Defensor depicted the resort owners as landgrabbers who use government property for their personal profit.
They also accused the resort owners of bringing pollution, excessive garbage and overcrowding to the island through their alleged refusal to be regulated.
In return, some 4,000 Boracay residents signed a petition asking Congress to deny Defensor's confirmation as environment secretary.
Sacay and the other resort owners say they would prefer to wait for the Supreme Court to rule on the case -- a process that could take years.
Those will be years of uncertainty for Casilao, the tattoo artist, who says the national government's moves have scared away prospective buyers of his family's lot.
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
CONFIDENCE BOOSTER: ’After parkour ... you dare to do a lot of things that you think only young people can do,’ a 67-year-old parkour enthusiast said In a corner of suburban Singapore, Betty Boon vaults a guardrail, crawls underneath a slide, executes forward shoulder rolls and scales a steep slope, finishing the course to applause. “Good job,” the 69-year-old’s coach cheers. This is “geriatric parkour,” where about 20 retirees learned to tackle a series of relatively demanding exercises, building their agility and enjoying a sense of camaraderie. Boon, an upbeat grandmother, said learning parkour has aided her confidence and independence as she ages. “When you’re weak, you will be dependent on someone,” she said after sweating it out with her parkour classmates in suburban Toa Payoh,
Chinese dissident artist Gao Zhen (高兟), famous for making provocative satirical sculptures of former Chinese leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東), was tried on Monday over accusations of “defaming national heroes and martyrs,” his wife and a rights group said. Gao, 69, who was detained in 2024 during a visit from the US, faces a maximum three-year prison sentence, said his wife, Zhao Yaliang (趙雅良), and Shane Yi, a researcher at the Chinese Human Rights Defenders group which operates outside the nation. The closed-door, one-day trial took place at Sanhe City People’s Court in Hebei Province neighboring the capital, Beijing, and ended without a
‘TOXIC CLIMATE’: ‘I don’t really recognize Labour anymore... The idea that you can implement far-right ideas in order to stop the far right is nonsense,’ a protester said Tens of thousands of people on Saturday marched through central London to protest against the far right, weeks ahead of local elections and six months after Britain saw one of its largest far-right demonstrations. Organized by hundreds of civic groups, including trade unions, anti-racism campaigners and Muslim representative bodies, Saturday’s Together Alliance event was billed as the biggest in UK history to counter right-wing extremism. A separate pro-Palestinian march had also converged with the main rally. While organizers claimed 500,000 had turned out in total, the police gave a figure of about 50,000. Protesters carrying placards with slogans such as
RSS