MANILA, Philippines?It?s a world turned upside down.

This was how lawyer Christian Monsod, a member of the Constitutional Commission that drafted the 1987 Constitution, reacted to the reported compromise deal that was reached between the farm workers and management of Hacienda Luisita, the 6,500-hectare sugar plantation in Central Luzon owned by the Cojuangco family of President Aquino.

?The bottom line is that the Cojuangcos do not want to let go of the land,? said Monsod, who was himself helping to broker a deal between Hacienda Luisita Inc. and the farmers, with the backing of the Catholic Bishops? Conference of the Philippines.

The deal runs counter to the ?letter and spirit? of the 1987 Constitution which dictates that agrarian reform lands should go to the farmers while landowners get just compensation in return, according to Monsod.

?Now, it?s a world turned upside down with the landowners getting the land and farmers getting the compensation. If you have economic and political power concentrated, you can turn the world on its head,? he said.

The Supreme Court has scheduled a hearing for Aug. 18 on an HLI petition against the implementation of a Presidential Agrarian Reform Council (PARC) and Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) directive canceling a stock distribution option (SDO) agreement and ordering HLI to redistribute 4,915 hectares of the hacienda lands to the farmers under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP).

Under the SDO scheme, the farm workers in 1989 agreed to take shares of stock instead of land. They ended up owning 30 percent of HLI shares.

In 2004, however, the farmers petitioned the DAR to have the SDO canceled. After seven workers were killed in a confrontation with soldiers and policemen on Nov. 16, 2004, the PARC ordered DAR to place 4,415 hectares of Hacienda Luisita under CARP coverage.

The HLI succeeded in getting the Supreme Court to issue a restraining order in 2005.

Déjà vu

Monsod said he could not see any way by which the DAR and the Office of the Solicitor General could change their positions. He would expect the two offices to oppose the compromise deal, he said.

?I do not see how the DAR and the Office of the SolGen can consider this as a settlement that will benefit the farmers. I suppose the SolGen and the DAR would object to the compromise,? Monsod said.

He said the Cojuangcos were trying to preempt the Supreme Court from ruling on the case with this reported compromise deal.

?This is déjà vu ? They?re trying this so-called compromise to render the Supreme Court case moot and academic,? Monsod said.

He said the Cojuangcos thought up the SDO scheme partly to escape a 1985 Manila court decision, based on a Marcos-era petition, ordering them to distribute the land to the farmers.

The Court of Appeals dismissed the case in 1988 after government lawyers themselves moved to withdraw it, reasoning that the hacienda lands were supposed to be distributed under the Aquino government?s agrarian reform program.

?Now that there?s another case that did not go their way, they?re trying this compromise. Isn?t that déjà vu?? Monsod said.

He also questioned the new agreement?s provision that sets aside only 1,400 hectares, or one-third of the hacienda?s land area, for distribution.

?If you look at the agrarian reform program, it says all the land should be given. How come the farmers end up owning only one-third of it? That does not make sense. I don?t see how that can be considered a compromise,? Monsod said.

Where?s the money?

Monsod said HLI also cannot claim that the farmers are only getting one-third of the land because they owned only 33 percent of HLI shares under the SDO.

Monsod explained that the farmers were told in 1989 that they were getting only 33 percent of the shares because this was supposedly the equivalent value of the hacienda land in the whole company.

?Now the farmers are getting only one-third of that land. I don?t understand that,? he said.

Monsod also noted that HLI had argued in 1989 that the 4,900 hectares it put under the SDO could not be distributed to the then 6,000 farmer-beneficiaries because they would then be getting ?less than one hectare.?

He said the management explained that each farmer getting less one hectare of land was not economically viable for ?large-scale sugar production.?

?But 15 years (after 1989), it turned out that that their (large-scale sugar plantation) enterprise was not profitable. How can they lose money for 15 years?? Monsod said.

?In other words, it did not work as a justification for not distributing the land. It was unfounded,? he said.

Getting away with it

And with the new settlement, farmers would now be getting small plots of land, Monsod noted.

?So, who are they fooling? But they got away with it then,? he said.

Monsod said that because HLI was losing money, it set aside in 2004 around 500 hectares which it converted into an industrial park. They also used 184 hectares to pay debts to the Rizal Commercial Banking Corp.

?They earned P1.2 billion to pay off debts and make up for the losses but the farmers only got P37.5 million because under the (SDO) they would only get a 3-percent share of gross sales,? Monsod said.

?Where did the money go? And now they are again losing money,? he said.