JULIO F. LAGMAY, ILUSTRE BASCONCILLO AND BLAS PINGGAN REPRESENTED BY HIS SON WINIFREDO PINGGAN, PETITIONERS, VS. HON. COURT OF APPEALS AND ADELA TUASON, RESPONDENTS.

This is a petition for review on certiorari seeking the
reversal of the decision and the resolution of the Court of Appeals* in CA-G.R. CV No. 12761 entitled “Julio Lagmay, et al. vs. Adela
Tuason” which dismissed for lack of merit herein petitioners’ appeal from
the decision of the Regional Trial Court, Branch 116 at Pasay City** in Civil Case No. 3087 dismissing
petitioners’ complaint for enforcement of a lessee’s preemptive right to
purchase a leased land under
Presidential Decree No. 1517.

The facts as found
by the Court of Appeals are as follows:

Adela Tuason was the registered owner of a 300-square-meter lot
situated in F.B. Harrison Street corner Col. Doro, Pasay City and covered by
Transfer Certificate of Title No. 3134. For more than twenty years (20), she leased a total of 164 square meters
of the lot to the following: Julio
Lagmay (67 sq. m.); Ilustre Basconvillo (50 sq. m.); and Blas Pinggan (47 sq.
m.). These lessees built residential
houses in their respective areas.

On September 15, 1980, Atty. Jose T. Molina, counsel for Adela
Tuason, sent the said lessees a letter notifying them of her intention to sell
the premises they were occupying in view of her need for money to cover her
medical expenses. She gave the lessees
first preference to buy the lot they were respectively renting and allowed them
three months within which to decide whether or not they wanted to exercise the
option and for how much (Rollo, p. 34). As the lessees did not make any reply to said letter, starting May,
1983, Adela Tuason stopped collecting rentals. The lessees did not bother to pay or even to offer to pay said rentals.

In April, 1985, Remedios Tuason Uichanco and Pacita Tuason
Principe wrote the lessees a letter reminding them that although their sister,
Adela, who had been ailing, had decided to sell the land, she refrained from doing so and even allowed them
to stay for two years without paying rentals. The sisters requested the lessees to leave the premises to enable their
sister to sell the lots to meet her financial obligations (Exhibit
“2”; Rollo, p. 35).

Instead of leaving the premises, on June 7, 1985, the lessees sent Adela Tuason a letter offering
to buy the land and “asserting positively their individual priority legal
rights under Presidential Decree No.1517 (Sec. 6) otherwise known as the Urban
Land Reform Law, to purchase or buy the said land for whatever valuable
consideration or price but consistent with the authorized prevailing fair
market value” (Exhibit “L”; Rollo, p. 36). Adela Tuason did not make a reply to this
letter nor did she make another offer to sell the land to the lessees.

On August 5, 1985, the lessees filed a complaint in the Regional
Trial Court of Pasay City for the enforcement of their preemptive right under
P.D. No. 1517 with prayer for damages and the issuance of a restraining
order. The lower court issued a
restraining order on September 27, 1985 upon the lessees’ posting of a
P1,000.00 bond. The restraining order
was converted into a preliminary injunction on October 8, 1985.

Subsequently, the lessees, through another letter (Exhibit
“M”), offered to buy the premises involved at P800.00 per square
meter. Adela Tuason once again did not
make any reply to said letter.

On August 27, 1986, the lower court dismissed the complaint and
lifted the writ of preliminary injunction it had issued. It ruled that before the lessee can exercise his “right of first refusal to purchase”
the leased land under Sec. 6 P.D. No. 1517, the following preconditions
enunciated in Sections 8 and 9
thereof, must be complied with: (a) the
lessor’s proposal to sell must be duly accepted by the lessee; (b) the terms and conditions of the said proposal must be
determined by the Urban Zone Expropriation and Land Management Committee; and
(c) the said proposal must be declared to the Ministry of Human
Settlements. The lower court held that
these conditions had not been met in this case. It added that the letter of Adela Tuason’s sisters to the lessees
was a polite demand to vacate
and not an offer to sell.

The lessees elevated the case to the Court of Appeals which, in
its decision of May 10, 1988, dismissed their appeal mainly on the ground that
the lessees could not properly exercise their preemptive right to purchase the property because their
leased lots were not included in the
244 urban sites proclaimed as urban land reform areas under Proclamation No.
1967, which amended Proclamation No. 1893 (declaring the entire Metro Manila as Urban Land
Reform Zone). The Court of Appeals
added that assuming that the area involved was covered by the proclamation, the
lessees waived their preemptive right by their failure to reply to Adela
Tuason’s offer to sell the land. Moreover, the lessees had failed to comply with the prerequisites for the exercise of their preemptive right.

The lessees filed a motion for reconsideration of the
decision. They assailed the
constitutionality of Proclamation No. 1967 on the grounds that it is
discriminatory and not uniformly applied “to all tenants wherever they
are.” (Rollo, p. 38). They also contended that they did not waive their rights to purchase
the land and that Adela Tuason had not abandoned her offer to sell the leased
land.

The Court of Appeals denied the motion for reconsideration in the
resolution of September 2, 1988 stating that
it was improper to assail the constitutionality of Proclamation No. 1967 in the
said motion as it was not raised in the trial on the merits. It considered the lessees’ other arguments as a mere rehash.

Hence, the lessees filed the
instant petition for review on certiorari raising as issues the
following: (a) whether or not
Proclamation No. 1967 is unconstitutional for being “utterly
discriminatory” and not uniform in application; (b) whether or not Sec. 6
of P.D. No. 1517 is self-executing for all qualified tenants who intend to buy,
on cash basis, their leased areas; and (c) whether or not Sec. 8 of P.D. No.
1517 applies only to qualified tenants who intend to purchase leased lands on an installment basis (Rollo, p.12).

After the private respondent* had filed
her comment on the petition and the petitioners their reply thereto, on April
25, 1990, the Court resolved
to: (a) dispense with private
respondent’s rejoinder to said reply; (b) give due course to the petition; and
(c) consider the case submitted for decision (Rollo, p. 65).

The issue of constitutionality of a statute, executive order or
proclamation must be the very lis mota presented in a case. The Court does not decide questions of a
constitutional nature unless that question is properly raised and presented in
an appropriate case and is necessary to its determination (Filipinas Marble
Corporatin v. Intermediate Appellate Court, 142 SCRA 180 [1986]; Dumlao v.
Commission on Elections, 95 SCRA 392 [1980]; People v. Vera, 65 Phil. 56 [1937]).

Although the Court may deem it best for public policy to resolve
the constitutional issue considering that numerous persons are affected by the
questioned proclamation (Tropical Homes, Inc. v. National Housing Authority,
152 SCRA 540 [1987]), there are other grounds by which this case may be
resolved on a non-constitutional determination (Alger Electric, Inc. v. Court
of Appeals, 135 SCRA 37 [1985]).

In this case, the resolution of the issue of whether or not Sec.
6 of P.D. No. 1517 is “self-executing” will determine the legality of petitioners’ claim for the preemptive right provided for in said section. Petitioners assert their entitlement to said
right but even a cursory reading
of said section points to a contrary conclusion. Said section states:

“SECTION 6. Land Tenancy in Urban Land
Reform Areas. Within the
Urban Zones legitimate tenants who have resided on the land for ten years or
more who have built their homes on the land and residents who have legally occupied the lands by contract,
continuously for the last ten years shall not be dispossessed of the land and
shall be allowed the right of first refusal to purchase the same within a
reasonable time and at reasonable prices, under terms and conditions
to be determined by the Urban Zone
Expropriation and Land Management Committee
created by Section 8 of this Decree.” (Underscoring supplied).

Clearly then, under said provision, the terms and conditions of
the sale in exercise of the
lessee’s right of first refusal to purchase shall be determined by the Urban
Zone Expropriation and Land Management Committee. Hence, the lower court rightfully ruled that certain
prerequisites must be complied with by anyone who wishes to avail himself of the benefits of
the decree.

Section 6 should not be isolated from the other provisions of the
decree. After all, the rule is that all
the provisions of a law, even if
apparently contradictory, should
be allowed to stand and be given effect by reconciling them if necessary
(Araneta vs. Concepcion, 99 Phil. 709 [1956]). The intention of the lawmaker must be ascertained not from a
consideration of a single word or a particular phrase of the law, but from the
context of the whole law or from a portion thereof, as compared with the whole
(Lopez and Javelona vs. El Hogar Filipino, 47 Phil. 249 [1925]).

Premised on the fact, among others, that “the traditional
concept of landownership has aggravated the problem arising from urbanization
such as the proliferation of blighted areas and the worsening of the plight of
the urban poor,” P.D. No. 1517 outlines the machinery by which its
objective of urban land reform shall be realized. Thus, Section 4 of the decree empowers the President to “proclaim specific parcels of
urban and urbanizable lands as Urban Land Reform Zone.”

Accordingly, on September 11, 1979, the President issued
Proclamation No. 1893 (75 O.G. No. 38, p. 7499) declaring the entire
Metropolitan Manila area, including Pasay
City, as an urban land reform
zone and exhorting all landowners
therein “to register their existing rights, development proposals,
proposed improvements, and proposals to sell, lease or encumber lands with the
Human Settlements Regulatory Commission” pursuant to Sections 4, 9, 12 and 15 of P.D. No. 1517. Said proclamation was amended on May 14,
1980 by Proclamation No. 1967 (78 O.G. No. 49, p. 6807) which specifies 244
sites in Metropolitan Manila as areas for priority and urban land reform zones
to which provisions of P.D. No. 1517 and other pertinent decrees shall apply.

These presidential proclamations are but examples of the fact
that P.D. No. 1517, including Section 6 thereof, is not
“self-executing” as further executive acts like the organization of
the committees provided for by the decree, must be done for the implementation
of the objectives of the decree.

The inapplicability of P.D. No. 1517 to their case
notwithstanding, petitioners had the opportunity to own their leased lots when
the late Adela Tuason gave them the option to buy them through her letter of
September 13, 1980. They lost the
chance by their own failure to exercise the option within the 3-month period
stipulated in said letter.

PREMISES CONSIDERED, the petition for review is
hereby DENIED.

SO ORDERED.

Melencio-Herrera, (Chairman), Padilla, Sarmiento, and Regalado, JJ., concur.

* Penned by Justice Jose C.
Campos, Jr. and concurred in by
Justices Ricardo F. Francisco and Alfredo L. Benipayo.

** Presided by Judge Dionisio N.
Capistrano.

* Adela Tuason died on June 11,
1986 but her counsel did not
manifest as to who shall substitute her as private respondent herein (Rollo,
p. 46).