IN THE KNOW: Aquino’s ‘hands-off policy’ on Hacienda Luisita

President Benigno Aquino III. INQUIRER file photo

Only months into his administration, President Benigno Aquino III said he had “adopted a hands-off policy” on the Hacienda Luisita dispute, saying he had divested himself of his interests in the  6,453-hectare sugar plantation.

“If I get involved, it will appear that I am interfering. I will be imposing myself on the people who have suffered the past six years,” he said.

As a presidential candidate in May 2010 elections, however, the then senator vowed to redistribute the family-owned hacienda in accordance with the law enacted in June 2009 extending for five years the 1988 Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP).

Apart from Hacienda Luisita, then Senator Aquino also pledged to complete the distribution of more than a million hectares of privately owned lands comprising some of the most productive agricultural estates that have so far escaped coverage of the program promulgated by his mother, the late President Corazon Aquino.

Hacienda Luisita straddles parts of Tarlac City and the towns of Concepcion and La Paz in the province of Tarlac.

The Cojuangcos bought the estate and the sugar mill in 1958 from the Compania General Tabacos de Filipinas through a Central Bank of the Philippines-guaranteed loan from the Government Service Insurance System and a dollar loan from the Manufacturer’s Trust of New York.

The loans were secured on condition that the estate would be distributed to small farmers under former President Ramon Magsaysay administration’s social justice program.

Hacienda Luisita Inc. (HLI) was incorporated on Aug. 23, 1988, two months after the promulgation of CARP, which allowed the distribution of shares of stocks in lieu of land.

Almost 5,000 of the 6,000 hectares of the land were placed under a stock distribution agreement between HLI and the farm workers, with more than 90 percent of the plantation’s 6,000 workers opting for shares of stock in a 1989 referendum.

Hacienda Luisita was the first corporation to employ the stock option provided under CARP.

In 2003, farmers in the sugar plantation said the SDO agreement did not improve their lives and demanded the scrapping of the deal. A strike the following year claimed the lives of seven workers.

The Department of Agrarian Reform subsequently revoked the SDO arrangement in 2005 which the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council upheld the following year.

HLI went to the Supreme Court, which then issued a temporary restraining order.

On July 5, the high court upheld DAR’s revocation of the SDO, but called for a referendum to allow farmers to vote anew on either land ownership or shares of stock in HLI.

The high tribunal ordered the DAR to “immediately schedule meetings with the farm workers and explain to them the effects, consequences and legal or practical implications of their choices.”

Supreme Court spokesperson Jose Midas Marquez later explained that no new vote was called, but that the workers would be asked to validate their decision on whether to own stocks or land.

A motion for reconsideration and various clarificatory questions have subsequently been brought before the court. Ana Roa, Inquirer Research

Source: Inquirer Archives