CITY SAN FERNANDO – Regardless of who uploaded the YouTube video on the Hacienda Luisita controversy, militants said yesterday that while it was “brutally frank”, there was “nothing wrong in the video’s rebuking Pres. Aquino and his family on the hacienda controversy.”
“The video documentary is objective and brutally frank about the immoral and illegal acquisition of the 6,453-hectare sugar estate by the Cojuangco-Aquino clan in 1957,” said Salvador France, vice chairperson of the militant Pambansang Lakas ng Kilusang Mamamalakaya ng Pilipinas (Pamalakaya).
France said the video should even be “commended for its all-out political exposition on Hacienda Luisita.”
However, he noted that the video failed to touch on the so-called “Hacienda Luisita Massacre” during the Arroyo administration as well as on the Arroyo government’s Oplan Bantay Laya “for the series of political assassinations killing supporters of striking Hacienda Luisita workers like Fr. William Tadena, Tarlac City Councilor Abel Ladera and Bishop Alberto Ramento of Philippine Independent Church (PIC).
“Still, the video documentary should be praised to high heaven and should be given recognition for its brave intention. What is more important is the stand of the people behind the video documentary that Hacienda Luisita was illegally, immorally and forcibly acquired by the Cojuangco-Aquino clan from the struggling and toiling farm workers of Luisita since time immemorial,” France stressed.
In 1957, the Cojuangco clan borrowed money from the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) for the purchase of the hacienda, on condition that the lands would be distributed to its tillers after 10 years, or in 1967.
The 15-minute video titled “Aquino-Cojuangcos: Facts They Don’t Want You To Know,” was uploaded on October 21 by “PinoyMonkeyPride Productions” and has generated more than 230,000 views.
Palace officials led Budget Secretary Florencio Abad said he suspected the video was “possibly meant to distract attention from controversies like the departure bid of former President Arroyo.”
But Abad admitted he has no knowledge who was behind the 15-minute video.
The video gives a full-blown detail of how President Aquino’s maternal relatives acquired Hacienda Luisita and how they managed to keep it within the family, and how they reneged on a promise to distribute it to farmer workers in 1967 as agreed upon.
The video also slammed the Philippine Daily Inquirer and ABS-CBN for being behind what the video calls the “yellow propaganda” that depict the President as a “rock star” and his late parents, former Sen. Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino III and former President Corazon Aquino, as a “hero” and a “saint,” respectively.
Abad said that during the presidential campaign of 2010, a video was circulated in compact disc “by the tens of thousands” and “by the sack” to local officials with the same theme to undermine the presidential campaign of Aquino in last year’s presidential elections.
