“In fact, it is preparing for the reversal of the decisions made by former Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) Sec. Rafael Mariano with regards to the land disputes there and in other parts of the country,” UMA said in a statement yesterday.
UMA noted that “the new leadership of DAR with Duterte’s blessings would conduct a forum to make it easier for landlords to evade land reform.”
“What the forum wants to achieve is the opposite of what the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council (PARC), which includes President Duterte, agreed to in September 2016 for a two-year moratorium for conversion of agricultural lands,” UMA said.
It added “the new DAR forum threatens Ka Paeng’s revocation order involving 384.12 hectares of land in the RCBC compound in Hacienda Luisita which was never converted to non-agricultural use for a period of more than five years contrary to the requirements of law. This is the reason why (Mariano) revoked the conversion when the previous DAR agreed to its conversion into industrial and commercial use.”
UMA recalled that the Cojuangco-controlled Hacienda Luisita Inc. (HLI) used to own the 500 hectares of land it later sold to RCBC, Luisita Realty Corp. (now Luisita Land Corp.) and Luisita Industrial Park Corp. (LIPCO), for P4 billion.
The Supreme Court, in ordering land distribution in the hacienda, also mandated that the farm workers be given P1.33 billion of the sales as their share. UMA also said it expected the forum to “reverse Mariano’s junking of the appeal of Tarlac Development Corp. (Tadeco) to exempt 358 hectares of lands from land reform in accordance with the application of the Cojuangco-Aquino clan to convert the area into an industrial zone.
UMA noted that some 600 hectares more of agricultural lands in Hacienda Luisita have remained in the hands of the Cojuangco-Aquino family, including the Central Azucarera de Tarlac (CAT), with the Lorenzos as new co-owners.
“There can be no justice for the massacre of agricultural workers when the President is pro-landlord like the people he supposedly detests, the Cojuangcos and Aquinos,” UMA also said.
