CITY OF SAN FERNANDO – The Alyansa ng mga Magbubukid sa Gitnang Luson (AMGL) and the Alyansa ng Manggagawang Bukid sa Asyenda Luisita (Ambala) are poised to ask the Supreme Court to stop the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) from raffling off Hacienda Luisita to land reform beneficiaries.
In a statement they issued as DAR started yesterday the raffle in Barangay Cutcut in the hacienda, both groups also said they would ask that DAR be held in contempt of the high court’s order to distribute 4,915 hectares in the estate owned by Pres. Aquino’s family in Tarlac.
“Who, in his right mind, would accept this? Pres. Aquino is making land reform a mere lottery affair. This is total mockery of land reform and contempt of us farm workers,” said Ambala chair Floria Sibayan.
Sibayan said “the farm workers are angered by the scheme of DAR as the raffle system would take them away from the lands they are already cultivating.”
She cited the case of beneficiaries in Barangay Cutcut where they have been cultivating some 200 hectares of rice under their so-called “bungkalan system” since 2005.
“DAR is really pushing too far. They have delayed the distribution by making up a new list of beneficiaries, messing up with the identification of an auditing firm, re-surveying of the land, the imposition of the promissory note for compensating the President’s family and pushing sugar block farming in the hacienda which obviously is to the benefit the Cojuangco-Aquino family. And now, this lottery scheme,” Sibayan lamented.
Sibayan also accused the DAR of reducing the land reform coverage in the hacienda from 4,915 hectares cited by the Supreme Court to only 4,099 hectares.
“DAR has excluded lands claimed by the Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. (RCBC), Centenary Holding and SCTEx . DAR is planning to shrink down the size of land by about 400 hectares which would result in the reduction of an average of 0.66 hectare of areas to be awarded to each beneficiary,” she also noted.
Sibayan also said “Ambala, which is the legitimate organization of the beneficiaries who struggled for many years and fought hard at the Supreme Court, was left aside by DAR when they surveyed the land.”
She accused DAR of “illegally imposing promissory notes for paying land reform compensation for the Cojuangco family as there is no such provision in Republic Act 9700 or CARPer, and the Supreme Court never ordered it.”
“Nothing of its kind. The promissory note obliges the farm workers to amortize the land, when it should be distributed free to the farm-worker beneficiaries,” she said.
Ambala has insisted that the Cojuangco family deserved no compensation for the lands. It recalled that the President’s family should have turned over the estate to the farm workers way back in 1967, as provided in the terms for a government loan obtained for the takeover of the hacienda by the family 10 years earlier.
