ANGELES CITY- The Alyansa ng Manggagawa sa Asyenda Luisita (Ambala) said yesterday that Pres. Aquino could not invoke “good faith” in the implementation of Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) as it accused his government of still using such funds “to protect the interest of his family in Hacienda Luisita.”
“Land distribution in Hacienda Luisita is a monumental sham and total failure thanks to DAP and this regime’s deliberate wastage of people’s taxes just so his family can retain control of Hacienda Luisita,” said Ambala Chair Florida Sibayan.
In 2012, the Supreme Court (SC) under then Chief Justice Renato Corona released a final and executory decision to implement land distribution in Hacienda Luisita which had been owned by the Cojuangco-Aquino clan since the 1950’s.
Sibayan said, however, that “billions of pesos from the DAP were used by Aquino to bribe legislators to impeach and convict Corona, as retribution for the landmark Luisita ruling.” “The Cojuangco- Aquinos are using power and influence to sabotage the SC decision.
All government agencies such as the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR), the military, police, and local courts in Tarlac are directly taking orders from the Cojuangcos to coerce and disenfranchise supposed land reform beneficiaries in Hacienda Luisita,” said Sibayan.
Aside from the DAP, a new disbursement mechanism by the “Aquino- Abad tandem” is now believed to be actively used to fund the Cojuangco- Aquino’s illicit sugarcane aryendo or lease agreement scheme victimizing thousands of Luisita beneficiaries in the guise of “land reform support services” such as block-farming, Sibayan noted.
She said that under the 2013 Grassroots Participatory Budgeting (GPB) program, otherwise known as Bottom-Up Budgeting (BuB), P476 million was released to the DAR for agrarian reform beneficiaries’ support services.
Sibayan said that “loyal Cojuangco agents such as Arsenio Valentino, a former supervisor of the Hacienda Luisita, Inc (HLI) now head the DAR’s Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries Organizations (ARBO) and can easily access these support service funds.”
“The funds are used to entice cash-strapped farmer beneficiaries to enter unfair lease agreements known as the aryendo, which will lead to the wholesale disqualification of beneficiaries and the re-concentration of the sugar estate back to Cojuangco-Aquino control,” she added.
“The DAR says that they need enough proof to stop the ‘aryendo’ in Hacienda Luisita, but the most notorious of aryendadors are currently in their employ. We will not be surprised if the DAR takes action on the aryendo – not to pin down these Cojuangco agents – but to lay the blame on the thousands of Hacienda Luisita farmworkers which they have systematically swindled and disenfranchised through consistent deception, violence and coercion.
Puro panloloko, pandarahas at pangangamkam,” said Sibayan. Sibayan also lamented that since June 25, DAR and PNP personnel using government- owned tractors “have been directly involved in the ruthless destruction of crops and productive organic farms in Barangay Mapalacsiao, Hacienda Luisita to make way for the replanting of sugarcane by another Cojuangco-Aquino agent, ex-LTO Chief Virgie Torres, a known ally and ‘kabarilan’ of President BS Aquino.”
“While Aquino coddles and grants special treatment to pork plunderers, hundreds of Luisita farmers have been subjected to police brutality and harassment suits. Under this landlord president, I have been mauled by police several times, imprisoned at least three times while facing numerous trumped-up charges because of defending farmworkers’ rights to our land,” she said.
A fact-finding mission report released by the Unyon ng mga Manggagawa sa Agrikultura (UMA) in November last year already pointed out “other glaring anomalies in the DAR’s land distribution process in Hacienda Luisita, such as the granting to the Cojuangco- Aquinos of “just compensation” overpriced by at least P167 million pesos and the anomalous land survey of Hacienda Luisita by the FF Cruz firm, which concerned DAR employees exposed to be overpriced by at least P9 million.”
UMA also pointed out that the highly-irregular deployment of the state’s armed police personnel, SWAT teams and elite military battalions serve to coerce farmworker-beneficiaries into signing promissory notes, and in the subsequent violent eviction of farmers from hundreds of hectares of agricultural land declared by the Cojuangcos as their “private property” in Hacienda Luisita.
“The DAR enjoyed maximum logistical support and media mileage for Aquino’s land reform which has indeed been quite expeditious – expeditiously bogus,” UMA said in the report. The report concluded that “institutionalized corruption and state terror have made genuine land reform a distant reality for the thousands of farmworkers in Hacienda Luisita and for the millions of farmers and tillers all over the country.”
“The DAR has been exposed as a ‘pork clearing house’ for corrupt politicians and fake NGOs to partake of lump sum public fund allocations. Under CARP, the DAR has merely served as a legal conduit for the blatant misuse of public funds for ineffective land reform schemes and as milking-cow of landlord families entitled to just compensation.”
“Pres. Aquino himself has allocated billions of pesos from his unconstitutional DAP for landlord compensation and for alleged bribery to secure the impeachment of Chief Justice Corona after the SC promulgated its final and executory ecision in Hacienda Luisita,” said UMA in the 2013 report.
Luisita farmers will join the people’s protests when the President delivers his State of the Nation Address (SONA) on July 28.
