Coconut farmers press Supreme Court to reverse ruling favoring Cojuangco
MANILA, Philippines—Coconut farmers are set to bombard the Supreme Court with letters demanding that it reverse a “final and executory” ruling awarding a block of shares in San Miguel Corp. to tycoon Eduardo “Danding” Cojuangco Jr.
In a telephone interview, Bayan Muna partylist Rep. Neri Javier Colmenares said that the farmers’ groups Kongreso ng Manggagawa sa Koprahan (Kompra) and Bicol Coconut Planters Association, Inc. (BCPAI), among others, still hoped that the high court ruling could be reversed.
Kompra and BCPAI are affiliated with Bayan Muna and represented by coconut farmers Willy Marbella, Felix Paz and Tate Fred Gonzales.
The April 12, 2011 decision was now “final and executory” and recorded as such in the Book of Entries of Judgments, according to a March 16 notice issued by Deputy Clerk of Court Ma. Lourdes Perfecto to petitioners and received by the Presidential Commission on Good Government last Tuesday.
Then Supreme Court Justice Conchita Carpio Morales, who is now the government’s ombudsman, had issued a dissenting opinion calling the decision the “joke of the century” foisted on 3.5 million coconut farmers comprising the poorest of the poor Filipinos from whose toils a few cronies of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos amassed great wealth.
Cojuangco, an uncle of President Aquino, is the current chairman of San Miguel, now a highly diversified conglomerate.
Cojuangco’s 20-percent block in SMC comprised 494,881,157 common shares officially valued in January at P58.09 billion at P117.40 per share.
Colmenares, a lawyer, urged other coconut farmers to write letters and petitions to the high court justices, so that the tribunal would “consider the plight and anguish of the sector.”
Compra and BCPAI belong to a group of coconut farmers fighting for the transfer of coco levy funds to its rightful owners—the coconut farmers who had been levied with the tax for nine years during martial law.
They had filed with the high court a motion to intervene in the coco levy case filed by PCGG and farmers groups represented by former Senators Jovito Salonga and Wigberto Tañada, but the motion remains pending.
The PCGG and farmers groups claimed that Cojuangco, in violation of fiduciary trust, borrowed funds from the sequestered United Coconut Planters Bank, which he then headed as president, and six government oil mills to purchase 20 percent of the SMC stocks in 1983.
Colmenares also called on Congress to fast-track the passage of House Bill No. 3443, or the Genuine Small Coconut Farmers’ Trust Fund.
He said that the measure, if enacted, would allow “the coconut farmers themselves and their organizations (to) administer the coco levy funds to ensure that it is those who were supposed to benefit from the funds that are their recipients.”
The pending measure seeks to transform all government shares in SMC into a trust fund.
Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile has filed a similar bill which, in particular, seeks to cover the other 27-percent block of SMC shares being held by the government because it was bought with the levy funds.
This portfolio was designated the SMC-CIIF (Coconut Industry Investment Fund) block because it was acquired under the CIIF in an elaborate scheme that included the formation of 14 holding companies arranged by the Accra law office, which represented Cojuangco at the time.
Enrile’s Senate Bill No. 2978, also known as the Coconut Farmer’s Trust Fund Act of 2011, seeks to declare the CIIF Oil Mills Group block of shares in SMC as well as all other properties and/or assets emanating from all coco levy recovered assets, as public funds.
All these public funds should be placed in a Coconut Farmers Trust Fund “for the financing of programs for the benefit of the coconut farmers, for increased productivity of the coconut industry, and for the development of coconut-based enterprises,” Enrile said in a prefatory note to the bill.
Section 6 of the bill says the CIIF-SMC shares represent “the outstanding capital stock of SMC, including all accrued cash and stock dividends, including all properties or assets emanating from all coco levy recovered assets.”
“The most controversial investment of the coco levy is the acquisition of the 33.133 Million common shares in San Miguel Corporation, representing 27 percent share,” Enrile said.
“(The) 27 percent share, once this bill is enacted into law, will form part of the initial capital of the fund,” he said.
The Enrile bill envisions the creation of a Coconut Farmers Trust Fund Committee for the “proper administration, disposition and utilization of the earnings and incomes of the Fund.”
This, the bill says, will “ensure that the benefits and gains arising out of the Trust Fund directly go to, and are received by the small coconut farmers and farm workers.”
