Corona remains the champion of Hacienda Luisita tillers

Chief Justice Renato Corona

CITY OF SAN FERNANDO—Twenty senators may have convicted Chief Justice Renato Corona, but members of Alyansa ng Manggagawang Bukid sa Asyenda Luisita (Ambala) remain grateful to him for his role in the April 24 Supreme Court ruling that granted them land on Hacienda Luisita.

The decision, which was issued in Baguio City during the court’s summer session, was announced in the presence of farmworkers who trooped there to witness the end to the 45-year agrarian dispute over the 6,443-hectare estate owned by the family of President Benigno Aquino III in Tarlac.

“We owe him a lot of gratitude because it was during his stint as Chief Justice that the decision on Hacienda Luisita was handed down,” Ambala president Felix Nacpil Jr. said on Wednesday.

“We did not want him out of the Supreme Court but the decision of the Senate cannot be recalled anymore,” he said.

Justice Presbitero Velasco Jr. wrote the tribunal’s April 24 ruling on Hacienda Luisita, which upheld the court’s July 5, 2011, decision and Nov. 22, 2011, a resolution he also penned.

The three rulings upheld the decision of the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council to revoke the estate’s stocks distribution program and to distribute 4,915 ha there.

But Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas, in a statement, warned against what it described as President Aquino’s “dictatorial tendencies.”

KMP said an “Aquino-controlled judiciary and the administration’s inability to address the people’s economic sufferings could pave the way for a dictatorship.”

It also said the next Chief Justice should stand firm against efforts to reverse the Supreme Court decision in distributing Hacienda Luisita land.

Talks with RCBC

Ambala leaders and members did not watch the televised conclusion of the 44-day impeachment trial of Corona on Tuesday because they were engaged in negotiations with Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. (RCBC) over a 500-ha land at the Tarlac City side of the sugar estate, Nacpil said.

The 500-ha lot is part of the 4,915 ha that the high court  ordered distributed to 6,296 farmworkers, who originally agreed to acquire shares of stocks rather than acquire lands in 1989.

In 2011, the court directed Hacienda Luisita Inc. (HLI) to give the farmworkers P1.3 billion as share in the sale of the 500-ha land to RCBC, as well as 81 ha of Luisita lands to the Bases Conversion and Development Authority for the Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway.

Nacpil said RCBC agreed to retract the five cases it filed against Ambala leaders and members.

He said Ambala agreed to demolish the hut where the members have been holding protest actions since 2011. The group has moved the hut to a lot across the contested property as it awaits final settlement.