Aquino urged to act on Hacienda Luisita row
MANILA, Philippines—The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines and peasant groups on Friday applied more pressure on President Aquino, urging him to act on the long-standing dispute over his relatives’ Hacienda Luisita and use his executive power to distribute the land to farmer-beneficiaries.
Manila Auxiliary Bishop Broderick Pabillo said Mr. Aquino must grab the chance which the “tragic” Supreme Court ruling had presented to him and order the distribution of the 6,000-hectare sugar estate “according to the spirit and conditions of the Carper Law.”
On Tuesday, the high court voted 6-4 to uphold the revocation by the Department of Agrarian Reform in 2005 of the estate’s 16-year-old stock distribution option. But at the same time, it called for a new referendum under DAR supervision to determine whether the farmers wanted to continue with the SDO or receive land.
“As Chief Executive, he cannot continue washing his hands on this issue,” said Pabillo, chair of the CBCP’s National Secretariat for Social Action, in a press conference yesterday with farmer groups and agrarian reform advocates.
The prelate asked what type of presidency could Mr. Aquino offer the country if he would not even make his own family give up its “stranglehold” on properties, which he noted, were acquired through government resources.
It was within his power as the highest leader in the country to order the DAR to distribute the land, he said.
The militant labor group Kilusang Mayo Uno echoed the bishop’s call, noting President Aquino‘s election campaign promise that he would distribute the hacienda to farmers by 2014.
“He should not be so arrogant as to think that he can get away from the issue of Hacienda Luisita. Even [his mother Corazon Aquino] was not able to do that,” KMU vice chair Lito Ustarez said in reaction to a Palace statement on Thursday that the President had already divested himself of his shares in the estate and that the Court’s decision should be observed.
Ustarez described Aquino’s effort to distance himself from the Court decision on Luisita as “insulting to the intelligence of the Filipino workers and people.”
The Farmworkers Agrarian Reform Movement in Hacienda Luisita for its part assailed the tribunal’s ruling ordering a referendum.
“The farmers are not really free to choose [amid a referendum]…When intimidation and the distribution of money have started, it is a guarantee that the SDO will prevail,” Benigno Palad, a leader of the group, said.
Former Akbayan Rep. Riza Hontiveros, who ran with Mr. Aquino under the Liberal Party in last year’s elections, said that the ball was now on President Aquino’s court.
“We hope that he would already implement what is on the Constitution and what the Carper law says [as] many are hoping he would be the champion of [agrarian reform],”Hontiveros said.
