ANGELES CITY- The United Luisita Workers Union (ULWU) said yesterday the failure of the Supreme Court to decide on the stock distribution option (SDO) issue in Hacienda Luisita has only provided “opportunity for the Cojuangco-Aquinos to maneuver” the case.
“By not issuing any decision today, the Supreme Court prolongs the sufferings of farm workers and provides opportunity for the Cojuangco-Aquinos to maneuver,” Lito Bais, ULWU president, said in a statement yesterday.
Last Tuesday, ULWU members who went to the Supreme Court were disappointed over the decision of the high court to defer decision on the case which has been pending since 2005 after the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council (PARC) ordered the revocation of the SDO. After the revocation, the Cojuangco-Aquinos sought a temporary restraining order from the high court and questioned the legality of PARC to issue such a decision.
Joseph Canlas, president of the Alyansa ng Magbubukid ng Gitnang Luson (AMGL), said the Aquino administration has become “the biggest obstacle to genuine land reform.”
“The hope for genuine land reform to be implemented by Aquino is futile and his promise of ‘matuwid na daan’ all rubbish. Reform lies on the action of Filipino farmers and exploited sectors,” he said.
“The Aquino government should expect more peasant protests,” he warned, even as he called on the public to support the hacienda farmers’ “bungkalan” program or planting of palay, vegetables and rootcrops which are prohibited under the SDO.
In 1985, a Manila trial court ordered the distribution of Hacienda Luisita lands to farm workers. When Corazon Aquino became president, the case was dismissed by the Court of Appeals.
The Cojuangco-Aquinos implemented the SDO in 1989 which enabled them to give shares of stocks instead of parcels of lands to the hacienda farmers, as allowed under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law. This, after they initiated a referendum that supposedly enabled the farmers to choose between stock option or land parcels.
But Canlas recalled that in August 2010, the Cojuangco- Aquinos again signed a compromise deal with farmers who were among those who had signed the SDO option in 1989 by allegedly offering cash to those who would express support anew for the same option.
Canlas said, however, these should have been prevented by a condition of a loan obtained by the Cojuangcos from the Central Bank in purchasing the hacienda way back in 1957. The loan agreement, he noted, provided that the land should be distributed to the farmers 10 years after the purchase, or in 1967.
