Hacienda Luisita tillers go to Supreme Court anew

A faction of the Hacienda Luisita farm workers seeking to get control of the 6,435-hectare sugar plantation owned by the family of President Benigno Aquino III, has asked the Supreme Court to reverse its July 5 ruling ordering a referendum vote on the thorny issue.

In a motion for reconsideration, the Alyansa ng Manggagawang Bukid sa Asyenda Luisita (Ambala) asked the tribunal to declare as unconstitutional Section 31 of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law allowing landowners to offer shares of stocks to farmers instead of land redistribution.

The close vote of the July 5 ruling gives them hope that the court would reverse the ruling directing the Department of Agrarian Reform to conduct a referendum for the 6,296 farmers-workers beneficiaries to choose between owning shares of stock in Hacienda Luisita Inc. (HLI) or actual land, said Ambala vice president Lito Baes.

In the petition, Ambala stressed that the stock distribution option (SDO) “did not improve, but had further thrust the farm workers deep into the quagmire of poverty.”

Failed scheme

It said there was “no more reason” for the continued operation of the scheme.

“The land should now be distributed to the farm workers. In the first place, this sprawling agricultural estate rightfully, legally, morally and historically belongs to (us),” the petition read.

While all the 10 high court justices upheld the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council’s 2005 decision to revoke the HLI’s stock distribution plan, they voted 6 to 4 to call for a new referendum, saying the high tribunal could not “turn a blind eye” to the overwhelming number of farm worker beneficiaries who voted in favor of the SDO during the 1989 referendum.

Jobert Pahilga, Ambala’s counsel, said the six magistrates “apparently closed their eyes” when they failed to consider that majority of farm workers voted against the SDO in 2003.

“With due respect to the Supreme Court, the SDO was contrary to the provision of Section 4 Article III of the Constitution which stated that (farm workers beneficiaries) should be owners of land either individually or collectively,” Pahilga said.

In its petition, Ambala also asked the court to include the more than 500-hectare portion of the estate which HLI had sold to the Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. and Luisita Industrial Park Corp., saying the latter cannot claim to being “innocent purchasers.”

“They cannot feign ignorance of the conversion order. It cannot be said that RCBC and Lipco had no knowledge of the (land) dispute,” the group said.