Aquino men to challenge SC ruling on Luisita

State lawyers under orders from President Benigno Aquino III to give preference to farmers are set to appeal a Supreme Court ruling calling for a new vote in the sugar estate run by his cousins that could serve as a “litmus test” of his agrarian reform program.

The Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) announced at a news briefing on Monday it would challenge the court decision ordering a new referendum in the estate to vote once more whether they preferred shares of stocks or redistribution of the estate.

Agrarian Reform Secretary Virgilio delos Reyes and Solicitor General Jose Anselmo Cadiz said they would file a motion for reconsideration of the high court’s July 5 ruling, pointing out that land distribution was the proper action under the 1988 agrarian reform law.

Delos Reyes was asked by reporters if the President’s family ties were considered in the decision of DAR and the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) to appeal the high court’s decision.

“The President has made it very clear,” he said, “that issues of family in the decisions of government should not play a part.” He also pointed out that Mr. Aquino had divested his interests in HLI.

Malacañang’s deputy spokesperson, Abigal Valte, said that the DAR and the OSG had discussed with the President their decision to appeal.

“The position of the President here is that he is after the good of the greater number of the farmer-beneficiaries, on what would be best,” she said. “This is precisely the position that has been taken by the OSG and DAR.”

The law is clear

In seeking an appeal, Cadiz said that the law passed during the first Aquino administration mandated land distribution if the stock distribution option (SDO)—an exemption under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP)— failed.

He said the period for carrying out the stock option had lapsed, noting that under the law, if the arrangement was not realized within two years from its effectivity, the land should be subject to compulsory distribution.

“The law says that there is no need to make a choice. The law says that the land should be distributed if the SDO fails,” Cadiz said. “The law is clear.”

Farmers demanding land redistribution also were poised to file their own appeals.

The HLI management has welcomed the Supreme Court ruling ordering a new referendum. HLI lawyer Antonio Ligon said on Monday the company would file a motion for clarification of the number of workers involved in the referendum.

The late democracy icon Corazon Aquino, fulfilling an election campaign promise to promote social justice and lift the poor from poverty, promulgated CARP two years after she was installed as president in the aftermath of the 1986 Edsa People Power Revolution.

But in what critics described as a diminution of the program, the CARP law allowed large estates to work out corporate sharing schemes within two years.

1989 vote

In a referendum in the 6,500-hectare estate in 1989, more than 90 percent of the plantation’s more than 6,000 workers voted for SDO in a referendum criticized as rigged.

In 2003, groups of farmers demanded that the stock arrangement be rescinded, claiming that the deal did not improve their lives.

After a strike in which seven workers were killed and scores were wounded by security forces in 2004, the DAR revoked the stock arrangement, which the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council upheld the following year.

In its July 5 ruling, the high court by a 6-4 vote upheld the DAR’s revocation of the SDO, but called for another referendum, saying it could not “turn a blind eye” to the wish of the farmers expressed in the 1989 vote.

The court also dismissed the farmer’s claim that the SDO violated the constitutional mandate under its social justice provision for land redistribution, saying that it was too late to raise the issue 16 years later.

Litmus test

Chief Justice Renato Corona said Hacienda Luisita could be a “litmus test” of the administration’s sincerity in pursuing agrarian reform.

Under a law approved in 2009, the government has another five years to complete the program. About 1 million hectares of the country’s most productive agricultural lands have so far eluded compulsory redistribution under the CARP law.

Cadiz said the Supreme Court may have erred when it said that farmers were still free to choose between stocks and land even when it upheld the revocation of the stock distribution plan.

The high court, citing the doctrine of operative facts, said that it could not ignore that most of the farmer-beneficiaries had chosen the stock option earlier.

But Cadiz said this doctrine could only be recognized when inequity would be the result of disregarding the good faith compliance with statutes before these had been struck down.

Doctrine of equity

It is not applicable in the Hacienda Luisita case because the agrarian reform law specifically calls for land distribution, Cadiz said. “As a doctrine of equity, it can only be used when the law is silent. A rule of equity was never meant to replace the law.”

He also said the President’s instruction was to do what is right and to follow the law. For him and Delos Reyes, the proper thing to do was to file the motion for reconsideration, he added.

Delos Reyes said the government, in supporting the distribution position, was just continuing its earlier stand on Hacienda Luisita, that the land should be distributed to farmers. “There has been no change in the position. The position is the same,” he said.

The Hacienda Luisita issue has been a contentious issue for decades, especially after the earlier adoption of the stock distribution option. With the recent high court ruling, militants and farmers have renewed their demand that the estate’s workers be given land as provided for under the agrarian reform law.

Mr. Aquino’s grandfather, Jose Cojuangco, acquired the estate from its Spanish owners who, fearing a communist Huk rebellion and labor problems, opted to sell out in 1958.

Loans that covered the acquisition were guaranteed by the government on condition that the estate would be distributed at cost to tenants within 10 years under its social justice program. The Cojuangcos claimed there were no tenants, only workers, in the hacienda. With a report from Christine O. Avendaño and Tonette Orejas, Inquirer Central Luzon