Tenants prod high court to resolve Hacienda Luisita issue

MANILA, Philippines—Hacienda Luisita farmers and their supporters flocked to the Supreme Court on Tuesday to urge the magistrates to resolve their long-pending claim to the sprawling sugar estate owned by the family of President Aquino.

Rodel Mesa, secretary general of Unyon ng mga Manggagawa sa Agrikultura (UMA), complained that the dispute over the 6,453-hectare agricultural land has been pending with the high court since 2005.

“We are asking the Supreme Court to issue a ruling on the case, be it favorable or not to us,” Mesa told reporters in Filipino. “We call on the Supreme Court to let the public know its ruling. We will never get tired of coming here until the Supreme Court fulfills its duty to decide our case.”

The 15-member high court was expected to discuss the controversial case during Tuesday’s session.

Mesa and more than 10,000 farmer-beneficiaries have been laying claim to the sugar plantation since then President Corazon Aquino, the President’s late mother, signed the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law.

In 2005, the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council (PARC) nullified the stock distribution option (SDO) which the Cojuangco-owned Hacienda Luisita Inc. (HLI) offered to farmer-beneficiaries in lieu of parceling out the land to individual beneficiaries.

Under the scheme, farmer-beneficiaries were to get shares of stock in HLI and a share of the profits.

However, UMA and other groups of Hacienda Luisita farmers opposed the SDO, saying the system was contrary to the real intention of the government’s land reform program.

In June 2006, the high court issued a temporary restraining order in favor of the HLI to prevent PARC from implementing its 2005 order.

Last year, some 7,000 farmer-beneficiaries voted for the SDO system supposedly as part of a compromise with HLI, a move questioned by several farmers’ groups and land reform advocates.