Cojuangcos should get only P1 compensation for Hacienda Luisita, say lawmakers

Bayan Muna Representative Teodoro Casiño. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

The Cojuangco family should not get more than P1 in compensation for Hacienda Luisita which will be distributed to its  farmers in compliance with the Supreme Court order invalidating the stock distribution option as alternative compliance to the agrarian reform program.

Bayan Muna party-list Representative Teodoro Casiño said the Cojuangco family should accept the P1 payment as a symbolic gesture for the purchase of the property and that any compensation beyond that would be an injustice to the farmers who had waited for decades to get their hands on the land they had tilled for so long.

Casiño disagreed with estimates that the compensation to the Cojuangco family would reach as much as P5 billion for the 4,915.75-hectare estate to be distributed based on the P100,000 price per hectare the family got for the right-of-way sold to the Bases Conversion Development Authority for one of the toll roads of the  Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway (SCTEX).

Profited tremendously

Anakpawis party-list Representative Rafael Mariano said taxpayers should reject any moves by the government to compensate the family since the money would be taken from government funds.

Mariano insisted that the family had profited tremendously from delaying the distribution of the land to the farmers,  which was why any compensation would be unacceptable.

Reacting to the high court decision on Hacienda Luisita, businessman Oscar M. Lopez said distributing the land to the farmers could be beneficial to the economy.

“If it’s done right and Hacienda Luisita also gets compensated for the loss of all that land, I’m sure it will help the economy,” Lopez told the Inquirer.

At least 6,200 farmers and hacienda workers are expected to benefit from the land distribution.

Lopez did not elaborate but he pointed out that the sugar central would no longer operate unless the farmers continue to plant sugarcane.

“If they plant rice, the sugar central will collapse,” he said. Nestor P. Burgos Jr., Inquirer Visayas