Supreme Court postpones to April 17 hearing on UCPB stockholders’ meeting

The Supreme Court has deferred for more than a month today’s scheduled oral argument regarding the aborted March 6 stockholders meeting for the nomination of directors in the 15-man United Coconut Planters Bank board.

The High Tribunal’s 15 justices agreed to conduct a full-court hearing on the case and set the oral argument on April 17 in Baguio City where the magistrates hold their annual summer sessions.

An en banc hearing was granted as per the request of the Philippine Coconut Producers Federation Inc., saying that it will only be through a status quo order that the UCPB chairman will comply, as they similarly sought a postponement of the hearing.

The case, filed by the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG), was originally handled by the High Court’s third division which approved to "refer these cases to the Court en banc."

In a single-page resolution on March 6, the Hight Court ordered the government, the Cocofed and businessman Eduardo Cojuangco, Jr. to maintain the status quo order before the Sandiganbayan issued its Feb. 28 ruling.

The freeze order, which meant the meeting can push through but the elections will have to be postponed, was granted based on the petition filed by the government lawyers.

"The Court resolved to require the parties to maintain the status quo existing before the issuance of the questioned order of the Sandiganbayan," the third division ruled, which referred to the favorable ruling to Cocofed and Cojuangco.

The anti-graft court held that Cocofed and Cojuangco, now the chairman and chief executive officer of food and beverage giant San Miguel Corp., can vote their shares in the UCPB board.

But the OSG, representing the Presidential Commission on Good Government, said otherwise, claiming the government holds a 95-percent sequestered stake in the board since Cocofed-Cojuangco shares were allegedly sourced from coco levy which are public funds.

In a 28-page petition, government lawyers said the High Court should uphold the right of the government,through the PCGG, to vote on the sequestered UCPB shares.

Solicitor General Simeon Marcelo urged the justices to nullify the order of the Sandiganbayan on Feb. 28 which allowed Cojuangco to vote the contested shares.

The OSG cited a Feb. 1993 SC ruling which upheld the PCGG’s right to vote the UCPB shares, whose acquisition the government said had been sourced from the controversial coconut levy funds, now amounting to more than P100 billion.

They said a similar ruling was also made by the High Court four years earlier (1989) in the case of the Cocofed and the PCGG where the SC ruled that "coconut levy funds are undoubtedly public in character raised as they were by the State’s police and taxing powers."