04/02/2020 E-Library - Information At Your Fingertips: Printer Friendly Petitioner further calls for IPRA's application, since "the right to lands of the ancestral domain arose only in view of the IPRA Law and cultural minorities had priorly no right to recover their ancestral lands."[39] Petitioner is utterly mistaken or misinformed. Before IPRA, the right of ICCs/IPs to recover their ancestral land was governed by Presidential Decree (P.D.) No. 410,[40] which declared ancestral lands of national cultural communities as alienable and disposable, and E.O. No. 561,[41] which created the COSLAP. These laws were the bases of the Court's decision in G.R. No. 145838. That the rights of most ICCs/IPs went largely unrecognized despite these laws was not due to the laws' inadequacies, but due to government indifference and the political inertia in their implementation.[42] It is also clear that when this Court, in G.R. No. 145838, declared FLGLA No. 542 as illegal and upheld COSLAP's recommendation of its cancellation, petitioner had no right to the land, and consequently, had no right to remain in the use and possession of the subject land. Sec. Alvarez's cancellation of FLGLA No. 542 merely conformed with the Court's findings. The cancellation made by the DENR merely sealed the fact that FLGLA No. 542 should not have been issued in favour of petitioner, in the first place. The COSLAP decision has the force and effect of a regular administrative resolution; hence, it must be implemented and is binding on all parties to the case.[43] The question whether FLGLA No. 542 is valid has been settled conclusively in G.R. No. 145838 in which the Court made the final finding that FLGLA No. 542 was issued illegally, and that it was made in violation of prevailing laws; and that it was proper for it to be cancelled. The Court ruled, thus: The Court of Appeals also stated that based on the records, the land area being claimed by private respondents belongs to the B'laan indigenous cultural community since they have been in possession of, and have been occupying and cultivating the same since time immemorial, a fact which has not been disputed by petitioner. It was likewise declared by the appellate court that FLGLA No. 542 granted to petitioner violated Section 1 of Presidential Decree No. 410 which states that all unappropriated agricultural lands forming part of the public domain are declared part ofthe ancestral lands of the indigenous cultural groups occupying the same, and these lands are further declared alienable and disposable, to be distributed exclusively among the members of the indigenous cultural group concerned. The Court finds no reason to depart from such finding by the appellate court, it being a settled rule that findings of fact of the Court of Appeals are binding and conclusive upon the Supreme Court absent any showing that such findings are not supported by the evidence on record.[44] (Emphasis supplied) Petitioner himself admits the finality of that decision, as he states in the petition that he does not "seek to have the cancellation of FLGLA No. 542 reconsidered or reopened, x x x but a clear determination of his residual rights after such cancellation in the context of the provisions of the IPRA Law." However, it appears from a reading of the entire petition that what petitioner means by his "residual rights" is for him to continue enjoying exclusive use of the land until the expiration elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocsfriendly/1/46133 7/15