MANILA, Philippines—(UPDATE) After more than half a century of ownership, the influential Cojuangco family might eventually have to leave Hacienda Luisita, their vast sugar estate in Central Luzon, due to the labor disputes that continue to plague it, Senator Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III said Saturday.

Aquino, the expected standard-bearer of the Liberal Party in the 2010 elections, said that his family has incurred a large debt due to the labor disputes and that he expects these troubles to continue if the family does not relinquish control of the 6,400-hctare property.

“As of now, for me personally, if my family finds it hard to stay there as before, then maybe my family should leave,” Aquino told reporters in an interview in Quezon City

“And once my family leaves, then I would really be free and no one can say, even by a bit, that I have a vested interest,” he added, speaking in a mixture of English and Filipino.

Leftist activists have scored the senator’s family for not breaking up the estate and distributing the land to its tenants under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law, which was the “centerpiece program,” of the senator’s mother, the late president Corazon Aquino. The Cojuangco’s converted what would have been the tenants’ land into shares of stock -- ostensibly owned by the tenants -- in the corporation that owns the estate, a mechanism allowed by the law.

The activists have also been urging the senator, now that he has declared his intention to run for President, to state his views on land reform due to the continuing controversy over the estate. In 2004, a violent dispersal of striking farmers left at least seven dead by the National Bureau of Investigation’s count. The workers claimed 13 fatalities.

Aquino said that there were now calls from striking farmers that they be allowed to return to work while his family was thinking of letting the estate go.

“My family is somewhat beginning to think that `our debt has grown so large, can we still finance it?’ Maybe somebody might be able to run it better for the benefit of the constituents,” he said.

He said he had never run the estate and that when he was working for it, “it was outside the hacienda. I talked to the outside planters.”

He said that it was not just the financial difficulties of trying to revive the troubled estate that has led them to consider leaving.

“You also need further necessary investments. And while we’re there, some forces will always be playing (pinagtritripan) with us even though most of them are not (locals),” Aquino said.

“When we are involved, this is always included in politics… so it diminishes their hope of returning and to turn this back from a sunset industry into a sunrise industry,” he added.

Aquino said that the potential of the estate for biofuels like ethanol was “substantial.”

“But if I’m there, then they will again say these things so how will I be able to help my countrymen?“ Aquino said.

He said among his cousins, his portion was just 1/32, and his father, the assassinated former Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr., had given away his share of land when he was still a mayor.

“I think those of my mom, the conjugal property, were also included. That is why agrarian reform was a centerpiece program of my mother,” Aquino said, adding that he will soon issue a more specific statement on the issue.

Activists, however, point out that Hacienda Luisita was put under the stock distribution option (SDO) during the administration of Cory Aquino. Instead of owning their own piece of land, the farmers got shares of stock.

In 2005, the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council (PARC), the highest policy making body on agrarian reform, voted to revoke the estate’s SDO in what was seen then as a reprisal for the Cory Aquino’s calling on President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to resign at the height of the "Hello, Garci" election cheating scandal.

The PARC decision is now on appeal at the Supreme Court.

Senator Aquino said that his family acquired Hacienda Luisita in 1957 because “people asked for us” as the estate was then also having a “labor problem.”

“The only reason we got (into Luisita) to begin with was the people asked for us or we were acceptable to them. There was a labor problem sometime in the 50s, when I wasn’t still around,” he said.