Truth-Telling

Posted on | March 24, 2010 | No Comments

‘It’s time to reveal the truth about the Hacienda Luisita issue and to unmask the “Cory Magic” as nothing but an illusion.’

THE TIME has come for truth-telling!

Not about the so-called “Cory Magic” which an Internet blogger calls as “just an illusion” being perpetrated by Noynoy Aquino’s image makers and the “Yellow Army” of the Cojuangcos to boost his candidacy as the Liberal Party’s bet presidential in the May 10 polls.

Not about the half-truths, outright lies and falsehoods which were peddled as truth by Noynoy’s corps of black propagandists to stop Nacionalista Party standard bearer Manny Villar’s march to the presidency. And neither is it about Aquino’s impoverished grasp of economic as well as foreign policy issues.

Rather it’s telling the truth about the land issue over Hacienda Luisita, where seven farmers and their leaders were massacred while protesting the failure of land reform in that vast sugar estate owned by the Cojuangco-Aquino family.

At first blithely dismissed by Aquino and his political camp, the land issue was been resuscitated in a revealing New York Times article by Norimitsu Onishi last March 14.
This issue “has drawn fresh attention since Aquino declared his candidacy for the May 10 presidential election, running on his mother’s legacy of ‘people power.’

“Though Mrs. (Cory Cojuangco) Aquino made land reform a top priority (during her six-year presidency), she allowed landowning families to eviscerate her distribution program. Critics say there is no greater example of the failure of land reform than her family’s estate.

“For the past five years, the family has been fighting in the Supreme Court a government directive to distribute the 10,000-acre Hacienda Luisita —the second biggest family-owned piece of land in the Philippines… to 10,000 farmers…”

When this Times news story broke out, NP spokesman and senatorial candidate Gilbert Remulla quickly seized the opportunity to lambaste Noynoy Aquino’s “hypocrisy and political double-speak” on the issue.

Obviously, Remulla was referring to the number of positions taken by Aquino regarding the dispute. In Davao City on February 5, 2010, according to a research team of GMANews TV, Aquino said the issue could not be resolved easily even if he became president. But four days later on February 9, 2010, he modified his stance and said that he would ensure Hacienda Luisita would be distributed to the farmers by June 2014.

On that same date, incidentally, a peasant group called “Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas” called Aquino’s campaign slogan of “country before self” as meaningless in the light of the Hacienda dispute. And they said that his campaign slogan “hindi ako magnanakaw” (“I will not steal”) is “historically false” because his family has “snatched not just millions of earnings but lives and future of the families of farmers and workers in Hacienda Luisita.”

The Hacienda was acquired by Jose “Don Pepe” Cojuangco Sr. in 1957 through a loan from the Manufacturer’s Trust Company in New York, which was guaranteed by the Central Bank of the Philippines, on condition that in 10-years time it would be distributed to the farmers as part of the social justice program of the government. Then, when the land reform program was enacted, the Cojuangcos opposed the coverage of the hacienda and used all their power and influence to retain control of the vast estate.

Well, as that special GMANews report put it so well, the issues surrounding Hacienda Luisita would serve as “the first real test of character” of Noynoy Aquino, and the sugar estate’s tortuous past would surely haunt him for years.

Another related matter that calls for truth-telling is, as an Internet blogger wrote, about Aquino and his running mate Mar Roxas who wasted no opportunity to milk the so-called Cory Magic which is, after all, an illusion perpetrated by the “Yellow Army” of the Cojuangcos.

“It’s all a big lie,” the blogger added, “the harkening to ‘better days’ by Noynoy, referring to his mother’s administration… It was during the Cory years when multiple scams hit the country, such as the scandalous P7 million Balog-Balog dam project in Tarlac, the diversion of P87 million intended for the purchase of textbooks, the P63 million Garchitorena land scam, among others.”

Indeed, with the crucial race to the Presidency fast approaching, it is time for truth telling!

***

Shouts and whispers. The calumny about that opulent mansion in Salt Lake City is an example of the black propaganda hurled at Manny Villar. There is absolutely no truth to the story that he’s the owner. A group called AteneoGrupo58 was responsible for the hoax.

Business World pundit Rene Azurin has identified those behind the hoax as Florante Castillo (Ateneo 1964) and Lito Demonteverde (Ateneo for a Better Philippines), both Aquino supporters. And this was confirmed by ABS-CBN which admitted the claim as “false and a hoax.”

Domingo Guevara Jr., CEO of Guevara Group of Companies, courageously came forward and publicly apologized to Villar’s camp, and Lito Demonteverde apologized directly by email to Villar for “unwittingly spreading” the lies about him.

The truth is that Toni Maier manages and leases it for location and shoots of films and other events.

Let us all expose falsehoods that are peddled as “incontrovertible” truth and not to allow these, including the crocodile tears shed by one candidate’s sister rooting for him, to influence our duty to elect the best candidate for the presidency.

by Nestor Mata
Business Insight Malaya Inc
TUESDAY MARCH 23, 2010

Comments