Hacienda Luisita farmers disappointed over SC ruling

MANILA, Philippines – Hacienda Luisita farmers expressed disappointment over the Supreme Court’sdecision allowing them to choose between stock distribution or land distribution in their ownership of the sugar plantation, according to a statement they issued Tuesday, shortly after the high court released its ruling.

Katarungan (Kilusan para sa Repormang Agraryo at Katarungang Panlipunan) and the alliance of Farmworkers Agrarian Reform Movement of Hacienda Luisita (FARM) said the stock distribution was a “sham scheme that allowed the Cojuangcos to control the land that should have been distributed to farmers and farmworkers of the hacienda.” The Cojuangcos, who include President Benigno Aquino III although he claims to have a small share, and his mother the late President Corazon Cojuangco Aquino, have been the owners of the 6,453-hectare agricultural land.

The farmers said that the Cojuangcos knew that they were in a desperate situation and would easily take advantage.

“There is no real informed choice when the farmers and farmworkers have only experienced owning stocks but not owning the land they have long tilled. It has brought nothing but joblessness and hunger,” they said.

Katarungan and FARM said they were calling on the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) to wrest from the Cojuangcos control of Hacienda Luisita by transferring the title of the land to the Republic of the Philippines, which would issue certificates of ownership to the farmers and farmworkers and provide them with full support services.

“The farm workers had been waiting for years for a ruling from the Supreme Court and we’re losing hope, they said.”

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.