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- In July 2021, Mary Jean Feliciano, mayor of Brooke’s Level within the Philippine province of Palawan, was suspended from her submit with out pay after the nation’s Ombudsman’s workplace dominated she had overstepped her authority in her actions towards a nickel mining agency working within the municipality.
- Whereas nonetheless underneath suspension as mayor, Feliciano launched a profitable vice-mayoral marketing campaign, successful a landslide victory within the Might 9 elections.
- Feliciano’s working mate additionally received over the pro-mining interim mayor.
- Feliciano says the vice-mayoral submit will enable her to renew her battle towards makes an attempt to alter native land use insurance policies, which presently haven’t zoned any of the municipality to permit for mining.
After being stripped of her submit for vigorously opposing mining in her group, a neighborhood official within the Philippine province of Palawan is heading again to Metropolis Corridor following a landslide victory within the nation’s Might 9 elections.
Mary Jean Feliciano, who since July 2021 has been suspended with out pay from her submit as mayor of the municipality of Brooke’s Level, has discovered vindication in a profitable vice-mayoral run.
Feliciano was proclaimed vice mayor on Might 10 after garnering 21,681 votes towards her rival, interim vice mayor Rogelio Badua, who received 14,448 votes. Her working mate, Cesario Benedito Jr., received the competition for mayor, defeating interim mayor Georjalyn Pleasure Quiachon by simply 516 votes. (Within the Philippines, votes for government workplace are tallied individually for the candidates and their working mates.)
Suspended
In 2017, Brooke’s Level residents reported to Feliciano that Ipilan Nickel Company (INC) was clearing forests in its concession, which falls throughout the Mount Mantalingahan Protected Panorama, a protected space that serves because the city’s watershed.
In response, Feliciano used her powers as mayor to challenge and implement cease-and-desist, closure, and demolition orders in 2018 towards the agency, a subsidiary of the nation’s second-largest nickel producer, International Ferronickel Holdings.
INC, nonetheless, contends that it held the requisite permits for tree slicing and was appearing legally. In a earlier assertion to Mongabay, INC stated the proclamation declaring Mantalingahan a protected panorama in 2009 respects prior contracts, together with the corporate’s 25-year mineral manufacturing sharing settlement that’s efficient till April 10, 2025.
The corporate filed a case towards Feliciano with the Philippine Ombudsman, which acts on complaints filed towards authorities officers.
In a ruling in 2021, the Ombudsman sided with INC and located Feliciano “responsible of oppression or grave abuse of authority” for her actions towards the corporate. The Ombudsman’s determination entailed a yearlong suspension with out pay, in place till July 27, 2022.
By that point, Feliciano ought to already be one month into her time period as vice mayor, a submit she beforehand held from 2007 to 2010.
Feliciano’s win within the just lately concluded elections got here after the Court docket of Appeals made public on Might 4 its determination to reject Feliciano’s petition to reverse the Ombudsman’s determination for lack of jurisdiction.
Operating for vice mayor was a strategic alternative, Feliciano stated, since on this place she’s going to lead the policymaking municipal board and thus can thwart makes an attempt to revise the municipality’s current complete land use plan (CLUP) and zoning ordinance, which presently offers no area for mineral growth.
The interim mayor, a vocal mining advocate who rose to the submit after Feliciano’s suspension, issued a enterprise allow to INC on Sept. 29, 2021, and a renewed allow on Jan. 28, 2022, permitting the corporate to renew operations in its 2,835-hectare (7,005-acre) mining concession space, 80% of which was discovered to be inside “core zones,” or extremely environmentally delicate areas of most safety.
“First [on the] agenda is to file a decision requesting the [incoming] municipal mayor to revoke the mayor’s allow as a result of underneath the CLUP there isn’t a mineral zone in Brooke’s Level,” Feliciano advised Mongabay.
Stress between mining companies and native zoning insurance policies
Ana Christina Bibal, a political ecology and environmental science researcher from the College of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB), stated current native zoning insurance policies and authorities businesses mandated to implement them are being “weaponized” by the extractive trade to legitimize its encroachments into areas formally designated as conservation zones in Palawan, dubbed the nation’s final ecological frontier.
“Regardless of the presence of in depth environmental legal guidelines, sturdy native opposition and stark long run social and environmental dangers, authorized selections in Palawan have usually all the time leaned in the direction of the pursuits of extractive and company industries,” Bibal stated.
UPLB assistant professor Ron Jay Dangcalan, who focuses on political economic system and environmental politics, stated “there are quite a lot of methods the nationwide authorities can use to coerce the native governments to permit mining.” These, he added, embody influencing environmental regulatory our bodies to challenge permits and clearances, and unseating native officers via trumped-up prices and different threats.
“We can’t let the forests and the folks of Palawan pay for the blunders of the federal government. Whereas the nation’s wants are briefly met, they will pay for it in the long term,” Dangcalan stated.
Most analysts predict the incoming nationwide administration, led by president-elect Ferdinand Marcos Jr., son of the nation’s late dictator, will proceed pro-mining insurance policies because it makes an attempt to shore up an economic system battered by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The way forward for Brooke’s Level depends on God and on us residents — we are able to’t entrust this to the nationwide authorities,” Feliciano stated.
Job Lagrada, an environmental activist and pastor, stated the native election outcomes confirmed how locals stood their floor to avoid wasting their forests that present them with clear water, air, meals and different life-giving pure assets. “Brooke’s Level folks perceive the significance [and] the worth of the environment over cash,” he advised Mongabay.
Main a collection of large anti-mining rallies on the town since final 12 months, Lagrada stated the locals will proceed to make noise to register their opposition. “There are two extra firms attempting to safe permits whereas the appearing mayor remains to be within the throne,” he stated. “Brooke’s Level will proceed to push out mining firms in our land.”
Banner picture: A rally on Might 5 in entrance of the municipal corridor. Picture courtesy of Job Lagrada.
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