Martina Lazaro began working at Hacienda Luisita in 1968—11 years after it was acquired from its Spanish owners by the family of President Benigno Aquino III using government loans granted on condition that the sugar plantation would be distributed to farmworkers under President Ramon Magsaysay’s social justice program.
On Wednesday, she couldn’t be any happier. Decades of hard work have finally paid off. She is getting a piece of the estate.
Along with other residents from her home village of Asturias, Lazaro went to Barangay Mapalacsiao where the preliminary master list of land reform beneficiaries in the hacienda was personally posted Wednesday by Agrarian Reform Secretary Virgilio de los Reyes.
After going through the list, printed on a tarpaulin, Lazaro heaved a sigh of relief. “My name is here. My son’s name is also here,” she said, beaming.
Lazaro is one of the 5,365 farmworkers who made it to the list put together nearly a year after the Supreme Court ordered the Cojuangcos to distribute the estate because a stock distribution option (SDO) did not improve the lives of the farmers.
The option was a loophole in the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) that Aquino’s mother, the late President Corazon Cojuangco Aquino, launched in 1988 as the centerpiece of her social justice program.
Hacienda Luisita has been described as the litmus test of the second Aquino administration’s sincerity in pursuing agrarian reform. Nearly 1 million hectares of the nation’s prime agricultural estates remain to be partitioned to workers before CARP ends in June 2014.
The Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) has been roundly criticized for its alleged lackadaisical performance in its land distribution timetable. Calls, led by churchmen, have been made for the resignation of De los Reyes for incompetence. But he insists he is on track.
In a press briefing Wednesday, De los Reyes said the DAR had drawn up two sets of names of potential Hacienda Luisita beneficiaries totaling 6,586.
Aside from the preliminary master list, another set of 1,221 names was tagged as “probationary.” De los Reyes said people on this list had been asked to submit proof that they were working on the estate in November 1989, the reckoning date established by the Supreme Court when the estate came under CARP.
Inclusion, exclusion on
On July 5, 2011, the Supreme Court upheld the DAR’s revocation of the SDO hammered out in 1989. It unanimously reaffirmed this decision on Nov. 22 and ordered the DAR to distribute 4,915 hectares of the estate to 6,296 farmworkers. On April 24, the court threw out a motion for reconsideration filed by the hacienda.
De los Reyes said the posting of both the preliminary and probationary lists in all 10 barangays of Hacienda Luisita, as well as at the Tarlac provincial capitol and the Tarlac City Hall, was meant to inform all those entitled to a piece of the plantation.
Those who did not find their names there but believed they should be included, can petition the DAR for inclusion, he said.
De los Reyes said the beneficiaries should also alert the DAR to people who they believed should have been excluded from the list.
In either case, proof should be submitted to the DAR in the next 30 days, he said.
De los Reyes said after this “inclusion and exclusion process,” the DAR would draw up a final list.
He said the preliminary master list was a result of interviews with people on the Supreme Court list of beneficiaries.
He said the DAR interviewed around 8,000 farmworkers and residents of Hacienda Luisita.
Proof of employment
De los Reyes said those on the preliminary master list had proof of employment from the estate management and showed premiums paid by Hacienda Luisita to the Social Security System.
Those on the probationary list lacked evidence of employment and were told to submit this in the next 30 days, he said.
Assistant Agrarian Reform Secretary Teofilo Inocencio, the former DAR Central Luzon director, said 970 of the original 1989 beneficiaries had died.
Inocencio said their “successors in interest” were included in the list of beneficiaries but they have to provide proof they are the legal heirs.
De los Reyes said he hoped to begin land distribution by May next year.
In the meantime, he said the government would conduct a survey of the estate and prepare the beneficiaries to become land owners.
Lito Bais, acting chair of the United Luisita Workers Union (Ulwu), said the list of beneficiaries was proof of victory in the long struggle for land distribution in the hacienda.
But he said the list had to be reviewed thoroughly “to weed out unqualified farmworkers and bring in those who truly deserve to be given a piece of the property.”
Among the possible conflict areas in the cleansing process are “double entries,” Bais said.
One possibility is that a beneficiary had been listed twice using a maiden name and a married name, he said.
Antonio Ligon, a hacienda lawyer, said the DAR’s process of finalizing the master list of beneficiaries should be respected.
He said the role of Hacienda Luisita Inc. now was to comply with the directives of the DAR and the court and provide documents that would clarify discrepancies in the status of would-be beneficiaries.
Compliance report
In its compliance report to the Supreme Court Wednesday, Agrarian Reform Undersecretary Anthony Parungao and Assistant Solicitor General Hermes Ocampo said the department awarded on Sept. 12 the contract for the segregation and subdivision survey of Hacienda Luisita to FF Cruz Company.
The firm will start its surveys as soon as it presents its plan to all parties, the DAR said.
The segregation survey is expected to be completed by next January and the subdivision survey by March.
Also as part of its compliance, the DAR told the court that it had engaged an accounting firm to audit the books of the hacienda and its Centennary Holdings Inc. to determine if the P1.3-billion sale proceeds from three lots, including that acquired for the Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway, were actually used for legitimate corporate purposes.
Other activities to be undertaken by the DAR are the valuation by Land Bank of the Philippines and completion of the claim documentation; issuance of certificates of deposit (COD) after initial payment to the landowner; allocation of lots, land distribution and generation of certificates of land ownership awards (CLOAs); transmittal of the CODs and approved survey plan to the Register of Deeds as well as the registration of the CLOAs, and the installation of the qualified farmworker-beneficiaries on their lands.
“We are confident, by all indications, right after election—sometime May or June—this will be done,” Parungao told reporters when asked when land transfers will happen.