The Luisita Swindle

Posted on | April 21, 2010 | No Comments

The Hacienda Luisita case is a continuing swindle — the word seems appropriate — of the Filipino people. It began when the Cojuangco family used the people’s money to acquire the hacienda, but then turned its back on a loan covenant to distribute the land to farm workers after 10 years. It continues with the use of the people’s money to build an interchange and overpay the Cojuangco family for the right-of-way to connect the Subic-Clark expressway to Luisita, although this connection was for their private benefit. Will it end if family member Noynoy Cojuangco-Aquino becomes president?

Sadly, not likely. Reader Joy Pascual of Quezon City, noting what she calls “half truths and half lies” in the statements of presidential aspirant Noynoy Aquino regarding his family’s 6443-hectare estate, writes, “…the acquisition of Hacienda Luisita in August 1957 was through a P5.9 million loan from Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) along with a loan of $2.1 million from Manufacturer’s Trust Company of New York and Chase Manhattan Bank in the United States. The GSIS loan was explicitly tied to the condition and a clear directive that the lands would be distributed to the agricultural workers.” She then puts her finger on the crux of the matter when she pointedly asks, “Were the lands distributed?” That (as Hamlet would say) IS the question.

Well, the lands have not been distributed and no matter how Mr. Aquino hems and haws about when Luisita land is going to be distributed to the farmers — “Uh, I and my sisters have been wanting to distribute the land,” “The land will be distributed in 2014,” “We will distribute the land when the farmers can get it free of all debt,” etc., etc. — the obvious fact is that the Cojuangco family does not wish to give up what has been the source of their wealth and power for over half a century. Even as candidate Aquino tries to evade the issue and actually bans media from asking him questions about Luisita, his cousin Fernando Cojuangco (who manages the hacienda) is apparently arrogant enough to boast to a New York Times reporter holding a tape recorder that the family “had no intention of giving up the land or the sugar business.”

Some 10 years after Jose Cojuangco Sr. acquired the hacienda, Governor Conrado Estrella of the Land Authority inquired about compliance with this agreed-upon land distribution condition. The Cojuangcos — having found that the US sugar quota produced such a lucrative business that the huge sugar estate could not be given up — replied that the condition could not be complied with because (amazingly) “the place did not have a single tenant.” Wriggling some more, they then cited a new law, RA 3844, or the Land Reform Code, that exempted from expropriation agricultural lands like the sugar hacienda “where large scale operations would result in greater production and more efficient use of the land.” What had started out as a fairly simple loan condition was now being muddled and complicated. The con was on.

Years later, on Dec. 2, 1985, just before Mr. Noynoy Aquino’s mother, Cory Aquino, announced her candidacy for president, a Manila Regional Trial Court ordered the Cojuangcos’ Tarlac Development Corp. to “execute the necessary documents to convey the entire Hacienda Luisita…to the Ministry of Agrarian Reform…which shall take possession of the Hacienda to be subdivided into small lots and conveyed at cost to qualified and deserving small farmers.” The Cojuangcos appealed this decision, making much of the fact that the court was in error in using the figure of 64,310,965 square meters when “the agricultural portions subject of the suit would (only) be about 5,176 hectares.”

Of course, once Cory Aquino became president, the distribution of Luisita land was avoided again by the adoption of Mrs. Aquino’s land reform program — issued via presidential decree — that incorporated the morally-indefensible Stock Distribution Option wherein the farmers received stock in Hacienda Luisita Inc. instead of land. Wriggling again to justify this finesse, the Cojuangcos argued that dividing “4,915.75 hectares among 6,296 registered beneficiaries would result in each (one) receiving a farm lot of 0.78 hectare, not of economic size that could assure (the beneficiary) an adequate means of livelihood.” On March 17, 1988, Mrs. Aquino’s appointed officials themselves filed a motion to dismiss the government’s own case against the Cojuangcos. Bye, bye, distribution pie.

The entrenched position of the Cojuangcos in Luisita was allowed to persist by a succession of friendly administrations (including Mrs. Arroyo’s). On Dec. 4, 2003, however, 5,339 very unhappy Hacienda Luisita workers filed a petition with the Department of Agrarian Reform to nullify the stock distribution plan “because their lives had not improved… (and) they were reduced to a hand-to-mouth existence with each of them entitled only to P700 to P800 in dividends each year and P800 to P1000 in production share each year.” They also asked for the cessation of the conversion — under the Cojuangco family’s Land Use Plan — of large chunks of agricultural land in the hacienda to industrial, commercial, and residential land that would no longer be eligible for distribution under the agrarian reform law. At that time, it was reported that only about 500 hectares were actually left for the farmers to work after the Sanggunian of Tarlac province in 1999 under then Governor Margarita Cojuangco had 3,290 hectares of the hacienda reclassified for conversion.

We know of course that the festering bitterness in the relations between the Cojuangcos and the farm workers culminated the following year in what has been called the Luisita Massacre where seven farmers were killed after an Arroyo factotum, Labor Secretary Patricia Sto. Tomas, cited “national interest” to justify sending soldiers to Luisita to force striking farm workers to return to work. Equating the Cojuangcos’ private interests with the “national interest” was clearly the norm before the falling out between Mrs. Arroyo and Mrs. Aquino in mid-2005.

Probably as a consequence of this falling out, the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council finally did the right thing and issued on Dec. 22, 2005, a resolution “affirming the recommendation of the DAR [Dept. of Agrarian Reform] to recall/revoke the stock distribution option (SDO) of the Tarlac Development Corp./Hacienda Luisita Inc.” This placed the Luisita lands under “the compulsory acquisition scheme of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program.” The Cojuangcos elevated the issue to the Supreme Court and managed to get a Temporary Restraining Order on June 14, 2006. The case is still pending as of this time.

What is obvious from all this is that the Cojuangco family will fight tooth and nail before giving up any part of this hacienda.

The crucial question, though, in the light of his presidential aspirations is, can Noynoy Aquino claim that he is not involved in the avaricious machinations of his relatives? Well, he can, but that does not alter the fact that he nonetheless enjoyed the financial and other benefits arising from their control of Hacienda Luisita all these years. Not a peep of complaint or concern was heard from him, even in his 12 years as a member of Congress. Certainly, he cannot claim ignorance of the plight of the farmers and what was going on in Luisita unless he also admits to being deaf, blind, and dumb. Moreover, if Noynoy Aquino cannot control and reform his own family and get them to do the right thing and forego their selfish interests, how the heck can he even claim to be able to manage the diverse competing interests in this country and reform our society?

It is reasonable to believe that Noynoy Aquino’s presidential campaign is really only about land, about a last-ditch attempt of his family to hang on to their pelf and power. Hacienda Luisita’s debts are said to currently amount to over P2 billion. Bottom line: if he does not become president, the family will lose their wealth and power. But, if Noynoy Cojuangco-Aquino wins the presidency, the swindle continues and we and the poor farmers lose.

BusinessWorld   http://www.bworldonline.com/main/content.php?id=9529

Thursday, April 22, 2010 | MANILA, PHILIPPINES

Strategic Perspective — by René B. Azurin

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