It IS true that there are many sides to a controversy.

This is apparent in the celebrated Valley Golf Club brawl involving the family of Agrarian Reform Secretary Nasser Pangandaman and businessman Delfin de la Paz.

The Pangandamans are insisting that Delfin de la Paz started the fight when he confronted the Pangandamans for overtaking the flight of the De la Paz family.

In turns out that Mayor Nasser Pangandaman was just joining the flight ahead of the De la Pazes because he came late.

The De la Paz children, on the other hand, say that the Pangandamans are the aggressors since it was impossible for the elder De la Paz to start a fight with a group of seven burly men with only a 14-year-old son, Bino, and an 18-year-old daughter with him.

Credibility at this point is on the side of the De la Paz especially since Bino and his father Delfin have injuries to show for the confrontation. The daughter, Bambi, is also very credible as a first-person witness.

It is only when you hear the elder De la Paz speak that you begin to see that the Pangandamans might be correct and that it was he who provoked the fight. From the impression he gives in his TV appearance it would seem that the elder De la Paz might have come too strong when he confronted the Pangandamans.

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There are also many sides to the issue of the suspension of the trading of Meralco shares by the Philippine Stock Exchange.

I wrote a column last week questioning the suspension and I said that it has shaken public confidence in the bourse which people perceived was becoming highly politicized.

The letter of Philippine Stock Exchange president Francis Lim was printed in this column last Wednesday. Lim explained the Exchange’s side.

Aside from the positions of Meralco and PSE, there is another angle to the issue—this time from Land Bank of the Philippines, whose share in Meralco is at the center of the controversy.

LandBank, through its assistant vice president, CARP Legal Services Department lawyer Noel Marquez, has sent a letter giving LandBank’s views on the issue. His letter is printed in full below:

“It is not difficult to understand that PSE’s decision to suspend the trading of Meralco shares of stock is aimed at protecting the investing public who may end up buying the “contaminated” shares in Meralco, those 42,002,750 shares in Meralco owned by LandBank but transferred to Josefina Lubrica on the basis of a dubious order issued by DAR Regional Adjudicator Conchita Minas on October 30, 2008.

This order of Minas was later on declared as illegal by the new DAR Adjudicator Marivic Casabar in an order the latter issued on December 15, 2008. In that order, Adjudicator Casabar withdrew and cancelled the order of Minas and annulled the actions taken pursuant thereto. In a subsequent order issued on December 17, 2008, Adjudicator Casabar in fact ordered Meralco to cancel the stock certificates issued to Lubrica and restore the ownership of the 42 million Meralco shares to LandBank, an order which Meralco has yet to comply.

There is no Supreme Court decision to back up the order of Minas. In her order, Minas cited the case of LBP vs. Martinez (G.R. No. 169008) promulgated by the Supreme Court on July 31, 2008 as justification for directing her sheriffs to “resume the interrupted process” of executing her decision of January 24, 2001 awarding Federico Suntay P157.54 million as just compensation for a piece of agricultural land located in Occidental Mindoro. But the Martinez case is totally inapplicable to Suntay, the landowner who allegedly assigned to Lubrica his rights over the land acquired by the government pursuant to its Operation Land Transfer program. The Martinez case involves a different landowner, Raymunda Martinez, and a different property, an agricultural land located in Romblon.

The decision relevant to Suntay and his assignee Lubrica is LBP vs. Suntay (G.R. No. 157903) promulgated by the Supreme Court on October 11, 2007. There, the high court ruled that LandBank filed its petition for determination of just compensation with the Special Agrarian Court of Occidental Mindoro on time. This means that the decision of Minas in 2001 cannot be the subject of execution. In fact, on October 24, 2005, the high court in the Suntay case annulled the auction sale of LBP’s Meralco shares. It is thus highly irregular and illegal for Minas to order the resumption of the “interrupted process of execution” because the execution of her decision through the auction sale of LBP’s shares in Meralco was not only interrupted but annulled and declared of no force and effect by no less than the Supreme Court on the very same day that the supposed auction sale was conducted by the sheriffs of Minas.

While it is true that the Supreme Court ruled in Martinez that a petition for determination of just compensation must be filed with the agrarian court within 15 days from receipt of an adverse decision from the DAR adjudicator (a doctrinal change from its earlier decision in Suntay that such petition need not be filed within that 15-day period), Martinez nevertheless did not reverse Suntay. The new legal doctrine can only be applied prospectively in later cases, but never retrospectively in earlier cases already decided with finality by the Supreme Court. Thus, nowhere in Martinez case can one read that the high court is reversing its decision in Suntay. How this very basic legal principle can escape the scrutiny of Minas and Meralco is a question that only they can answer.

Except for the highly questionable cancellation of LBP’s shares in Meralco and their transfer to Lubrica, LandBank is not at the losing end of the just compensation case involving it and Suntay and his assignee Lubrica. LandBank has in fact won its case in the Supreme Court in Suntay and the just compensation case is still pending in the agrarian court of Occidental Mindoro.”