Peasant groups hail SC ruling against Cojuangco

Eduardo “Danding” Cojuangco Jr. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines—Militant peasant groups on Thursday cheered the Supreme Court for ruling with finality that the shares of Eduardo “Danding” Cojuangco Jr. in United Coconut Planters Bank  were owned by the government and should be used for the benefit of coconut farmers.

“The SC ruling did not only strengthen the small coconut farmers’ legitimate claim over the 72.2 percent shares in UCPB but reaffirmed the historical truth that President Aquino’s uncle plundered the coco levy funds,” said Willy Marbella, deputy secretary general of the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas.

KMP, along with the claimant group Coco Levy Funds Ibalik sa Amin (CLAIM), described the UCPB case as the “strongest testament” to how Cojuangco and the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos plundered the coco levy funds.

At its session on Tuesday, the high court ruled that  shares of stock Cojuangco received after negotiating the acquisition by the Philippine Coconut Authority  of First United Bank, which was later renamed UCPB and which became the depository of coconut levy funds, were public property.

The value of the contested shares was not immediately known, but a former UCPB director said it was a “pittance” compared with the  27 percent of the shares of stock in San Miguel Corp., worth P70 billion, that the court ruled last year belonged to coconut farmers because they were  acquired with the coconut levy and should be used for their benefit and the development of the coconut industry.

The levy was imposed from 1973 to 1982 on coconut farmers.

The court said that it would no longer entertain any further pleadings on the case.

“UCPB is a product of the political masterstroke of the Marcos-Cojuangco coco fund mafia,” Marbella, also CLAIM national coordinator, said in a statement.

He said the decision stating that shares were owned by the “government” actually  means that “the funds were owned by the small coconut farmers.”

“The government is only a trustee for the small coconut farmers, the genuine and legitimate owners of the funds,” Marbella said, adding, “The funds were forcibly exacted from small coconut farmers by the Marcos dictatorship.”

In a November 27, 2012 decision, the high court declared as unconstitutional provisions in the agreement between Cojuangco and the PCA on May 25, 1975, which allowed the businessman, known to be a crony of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, “to personally and exclusively own public funds or property.”

The agreement provided for the transfer to Cojuangco “by way of compensation,” of 10 percent of the 72.2 percent shares of stock that PCA purchased using the coconut levy funds.

KMP and CLAIM said that “in light of the SC ruling, we demand Aquino to immediately return to small coconut farmers the whole 72.2 percent shares in UCPB along with the more than P70 billion recovered from San Miguel Corp. in October last year.”

The peasant groups also called on Congress to immediately tackle House Bill 1327 or the “Genuine Small Coconut Farmers’ Fund Act of 2013” filed by Anakpawis party-list Representative Fernando Hicap.

Under HB 1327, the Genuine Small Coconut Farmers’ Fund shall not be a part of the general funds of the national government and shall be used exclusively for the benefit of genuine small coconut farmers and carried the small coconut farmers’ demand for the “cash distribution of the recovered funds.”

Government officials have repeatedly nixed demands to distribute the coco levy funds to individual farmers or farmer groups, saying these should be put into investments that would benefit them and the coconut industry.