ANGELES CITY– Hacienda Luisita farmworkers vowed yesterday to bring their protests closer to Pres. Aquino after they accused his family of “sabotaging” efforts to distribute hacienda lands to them.
Members of the Alyansa ng Manggagawang Bukid sa Asyenda Luisita (Ambala) and its mother organization Alyansa ng mga Magbubukid ng Gitnang Luson (AMGL) held their first rally yesterday in front of the house inherited by the President from his mother former Pres. Corazon Aquino on Times St.
“The president’s family has continued its effort to sabotage the land distribution that the Supreme Court decided on its November 22, 2011 and April 24, 2012 landmark decisions that favored the distribution of hacienda lands to the farmers,” said AMGL chair Joseph Canlas.
Canlas accused the President’s family of “sabotaging” land distribution by allegedly coming out with their own list of 10,000 land reform beneficiaries in the hacienda and submitting this to the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR).
“The Cojuangco-Aquino family has been disrupting the distribution of Hacienda Luisita lands to the 6,296 farmworker-beneficiaries. It is apparent that Aquino has instructed the agrarian reform department to delay the implementation of the Supreme Court’s verdict,” he said.
“DAR has been making itself busy with nonsense and wasting much precious time.
It already has the list of the 6,296 beneficiaries but it has been giving room to the motion of the President’s family which is clearly a delaying tactic,” Ambala chairperson Rodel Mesa said.
He noted that “so far, DAR has only implemented an information drive about the decision while accommodating more names as beneficiaries.
“The DAR is thus sowing false hopes among those who are not qualified and this is infusing disunity,” he said.
Canlas said that Ambala has been “organizing and educating farmworkers on collective farming instead of individual, small-scale farming that could turn out to be more costly.”
Meanwhile, Mesa also accused the President’s family of allegedly conspiring with the Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. (RCBC) in the case of the 184 hectares of hacienda land in Barangay Balete.
The area was sold by the Cojuangcos to the bank in 2005, but the farmworkers insisted the sale was not legitimate.
“RCBC and the Cojuangcos have colluded to launch their Oplan April Spring whose main objective is to confuse the farm workers and split Ambala,” Mesa said.
He warned that “they are dead wrong to think that they would succeed. Ambala has expelled many leaders such as Noel Mallari who compromised our fundamental principle of attaining genuine land reform in the hacienda.”
