Bishops urge SC to rule on Luisita

An official of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) has urged the Supreme Court to resolve at the soonest possible time the dispute over the redistribution of Hacienda Luisita, the 6,453-hectare sugar plantation in Tarlac owned by the family of President Aquino.

Manila Auxiliary Bishop Broderick Pabillo, head of the CBCP National Secretariat for Social Action, said the continued delay in deciding the long-standing dispute between the land owners and the farmers may raise suspicions of “political motives.”

“We’re wondering why it’s taking long to be decided upon,” said Pabillo on Church-run Radio Veritas over the weekend.

“Hasn’t the case been studied yet or is it just waiting for an opportunity to be used for political bargaining?” he said.

The Supreme Court was supposed to decide by last week the legality of a decision by the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council (PARC) scrapping a 1989 stock distribution option (SDO) at the hacienda, he added.

But the magistrates deferred making a ruling after failing to come up with a decision on how to cast their votes in the case.

The SDO was allowed in the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) enacted by Mr. Aquino’s mother, the late President Corazon Aquino, in 1988 to implement a campaign promise to uphold social justice.

Under CARP, landowners may retain only seven ha of their land. But large agricorporations are given several options, among them the distribution of stocks to tenants instead of land.

The Department of Agrarian Reform had allowed Hacienda Luisita to take the SDO option. But in 2005 it revoked its approval. The issues were taken to court.

Last year, the Hacienda Luisita management struck a compromise with its workers, offering them a choice of either retaining their shares of stock or receiving parcels of land from 1,366 ha of the plantation.

Bad precedent

The Catholic Church had urged the high court not to legitimize this deal, saying that it would set a bad precedent for other landowners across the country.

“We are worried about the Supreme Court because it has yet to decide on the long-standing Hacienda Luisita row,” said Pabillo.

The bishop stressed, “We are calling on the high court to decide on the case based on the law and not on political compromises.”

He added that issuing a ruling on the Luisita controversy would prove the Aquino administration’s sincerity in implementing the Comprehensive Agrarian Program Extension with Reforms (CARPer), which was issued in August 2009.

The Hacienda Luisita issue is a thorny issue for the Aquino family. In 2004, the bloody dispersal of a protest action at the hacienda led to the deaths of seven protesters.

Mr. Aquino has said that he owns only a small portion of the family estate and would abide by any decision of the court.

Since last year, the Catholic Church and the Aquino administration have been at odds over the possible passage of a reproductive health bill which would promote birth control and mandate sex education in schools.