President Benigno Aquino. AFP
After an epic 26-year struggle, coconut farmers may be back to square one, unless President Benigno Aquino listens to calls that he intervene in the management of P70 billion in recovered state assets acquired with the use of taxes imposed on them during the martial law years.
The same mantra the Ferdinand Marcos regime used to exact a levy on copra is being raised once again—that the farmers will have to sweat it out to enjoy the benefits of a favorable Supreme Court decision on Jan. 24 that became final on Sept. 4.
Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala told reporters on Nov. 9 that the P70 billion in shares of stock redeemed by San Miguel Corp. (SMC) last month, plus dividends and interests, would not be returned to the farmers.
“We develop the industry, not the individual. Because if we make it individual, we won’t be able to use the money until Judgment Day’s eve,” Alcala said. “Once the coconut industry begins to thrive, it will be felt by the coconut farmers.”
The Alcala prescription, said Sen. Joker Arroyo over the weekend, “is exactly the same as the evil that the martial law government promised the farmers when they collected the levies.”
Arroyo’s blast came amid calls by industry reformists for the President to form a council composed of respected leaders that would formulate a program that would use the assets solely for the benefit of the farmers who paid the levy.
Omi Royandoyan, executive director of the policy group Centro Saka, suggested the inclusion of former Sen. Wigberto Tañada and former Quezon Rep. Oscar F. Santos in the council. Tañada, 74, son of the late nationalist Lorenzo Tañada, and Santos, 84, have been at the forefront of a crusade for reforms in the industry for decades.
A presidential task force led by the National Anti-Poverty Commission in its so-called road map has proposed the use of the fund in its programs.
The Philippine Coconut Authority, by law authorized to handle the fund that it had mishandled during the martial law years, wants to undertake massive replanting as coconut trees across the country have become senile, unable to sustain demand. This has been nixed in the Senate as a recipe for “shenanigans.”
Joey Faustino, executive director of the Coconut Industry Reform Movement, warned that the release of the fund before the elections next year as a component of the government dole program, called conditional cash transfers, could result in the “further exploitation” of the farmers.
Uncomfortable silence
“We have told Alcala in our farmers conference that it is most important to set up management and utilization policies for the P70-billion funds and keep up efforts to recover other portions as well,” Faustino said.
“We honestly believe this can be done within the time period before the 2013 election, so that actual implementation comes after the election,” he added.
“Unfortunately, there has been an uncomfortable lull and silence after the funds were remitted to the Bureau of the Treasury over a month ago,” said Marco Sardillo III, spokesperson of a coalition of farmer groups.
“I hope that this does not mean that the purported claims for advances and reimbursements by the coco levy companies—UCPB (United Coconut Planters Bank), Cocolife and the Oil Mills Group—in the amount of approximately P15 billion are quietly being settled,” he said.
Danny Carranza of the peasant group Katarungan called for the urgent creation of a trust fund to prevent the dissipation of the assets and manage them in an efficient and transparent manner.
Carranza noted that pending bills that would create such a trust fund were unlikely to be passed as the current session of Congress neared the homestretch and lawmakers got preoccupied with the elections next year.
“It is, therefore, incumbent upon the President to issue an executive order for this purpose,” he said. “The farmers are, of course, asking: What happened to the Sept. 20 commitment of Malacañang, through Secretary Ricky Carandang, that it will meet with farmers group to present the government’s plan where small farmers are the main beneficiaries?”
In a series of decrees, the Marcos regime clamped the taxes on copra beginning a year after the declaration of martial law in 1972.
For whose benefit?
The decrees resulted in the setting up of a coconut consumers stability fund, a disastrous coconut seedling farm, and later a coconut industry investment fund (CIIF), among many other enterprises.
The initiatives made some of the Marcos cronies rich beyond their wildest dreams but the 3.5 million coconut farmers and their families, comprising a quarter of the nation’s population, remained impoverished.
One night, Representative Santos pored over stacks of presidential issuances and counted the phrase “for the benefit of the farmers” in the documents until he fell asleep.
The CIIF led to the acquisition of UCPB, the oil mills and the concoction of an elaborate scheme to acquire the majority shares in SMC through 14 holding companies and various enterprises set up by lawyers of businessman Eduardo “Danding” Cojuangco.
An audit conducted after the 1986 Edsa Revolution that ousted Marcos showed the fund also was used to hold a Miss Universe contest, an international film festival and the setting up of the Coconut Palace for the visit of Pope John Paul II in 1981. The pontiff refused to stay in the opulence amid grinding poverty besetting Filipinos.
The night the Marcoses fled, shares of SMC in blank stock certificates were found in the Palace vault. This led to the hunt for illegally acquired wealth during the dictatorship and the seizure of the SMC shares. Acquired in 1983 for P2 billion, the shares had ballooned in value.
Joke of the century
In April last year, the Supreme Court, in a ruling derided by a dissenting justice as the “biggest joke to hit the century,” awarded a 20-percent bloc of SMC shares worth P54.4 billion to Cojuangco, SMC chairman and uncle of President Aquino.
Early this year, the court decided that another 24-percent bloc of SMC shares—whittled down from an original 27 percent as a result of SMC’s expansion—belonged to the government to be used for the benefit of the farmers and development of the industry. Even before the decision was handed down, the farmers had already lost some P25 billion when the package was converted from common to preferred shares.
A third bloc of the sequestered SMC shares, worth P15 billion, is in treasury warrants. The high court has been asked to direct SMC to release the amount to the government.
The militants have vowed to recover all of the SMC shares related to the coconut levy. But first, they have to see to it that the first package they had won from the court last month would go to the farmers, not for the rehabilitation of the industry that they say should be funded by the government.