The government must stop farting about and give the coco levy to the real farmers!

Don’t you get sick and tired of it all? The endless lawyering which mocks and halts progress in our desperate country? The never-ending debates, diatribes, and hate-mongering?

By God, it’s time our government firmly declared itself for our people, and not for the annoying sabre-rattlers, the vested interests capable of hiring high-powered legal shysters – attorneys-in-law and attorneys-outlaw and the dakdak variety of false patriots who believe and loudly proclaim they have the monopoly on wisdom and virtue.

For example, take such a simple but valuable matter as the "coconut levy." This should have been settled years ago, for the benefit of its true owners, the coconut farmers. But no. Everytime we hear word that some kind of agreement is being worked out regarding coco levy funds and the sequestered shares in San Miguel Corporation, there’s a virtual barrage of flak from the same snarling quarters, trying to shoot down the settlement.

A few weeks ago, when the cheering news came out from Davao that several farmers’ groups – once bitter enemies for the coco levy funds – had reached an amicable agreement on what to do with the San Miguel shares, the moth-eaten Presidential Commission on Good Government (whose writ should have expired long ago) went to Congress to declare the coco levy funds public in character – a declaration that would surely derail any kind of agreement. The worst part of that silly declaration is that, assuming for the sake of argument, Congress does what the PCGG wishes, the levy will be litigated to high heavens by every lawyer who has a client with an interest in the coco levy. What a rotten situation. Nobody will benefit at all. (Except the lawyers.)

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What those geniuses in the PCGG don’t seem to understand is that for the past 16 – yep, sixteen years – four governments have tried to end the entire coco levy issue through the courts. This process has miserably failed.

We are nowhere near solving the coco levy problem than we were on February 27, 1986. Even President Cory Aquino, with a revolutionary mandate which merged the powers of both the executive and the legislature in her office, could not work out the legal tangle that is the coco levy and its accompanying sequestration.

The tragedy is that for the last 16 years those funds have lain idle. The only ones who we can say profited from them were the Sorianos who, despite their tiny minority (almost invisible) stake in San Mig, were able to retain management control of the company, plus, of course, the PCGG representatives who were named to sit on the Board of Directors, collecting fat fees, when they had not invested even a single centavo in the firm.

As a matter of fact, a seat on that cushy Board of Directors proved for each successive Administration a convenient way to directly reward political contributors and supporters of the regime in power. In the meantime, lawyers on all sides would endlessly argue the pros and cons, and the sequestration cases would grind to a halt.

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Who suffer from the deadlock? Clearly, for one, the San Miguel shareholders. What do you think happens when almost half of a company’s outstanding stock is in the hands of the government – mind you, in a company which is evidently one of our country’s crown jewels? San Miguel, after all, is one of the rare firms we have that belongs in the worldwide FORTUNE 500.

The second and most aggrieved group are the coconut farmers. I won’t get into the legal niceties of where the levy funds came from, but one thing is super-clear: They were meant to benefit the coco farmers. Can anyone dispute that?

And now we come to the crux of the issue. For more than a century, up to a few decades ago, the coconut industry was a far more important sector of our economy (as your elders can tell you). My father used to call the coconut "The Tree of Life." Alas, the coconut is down. It was vital that a fund be created to rescue that industry, for if the coconut withered, so would eventually our economy. This is demonstrated today when our once upmarket electronics export industry has been devastated, and only a surge in agriculture is sustaining us in this cruel world.

Yet those funds sit worthlessly, when they could have been utilized to develop and improve coconut production and uplift the plight of our farmers! Nothing can be done when the levy funds are the subject of never-ending bickering – and stalled, as well, in the courts where things (as the Garchitorena suspension shows) move with glacial slowness?

Shall we wait another 16 years while the coconut industry deteriorates to extinction? The legendary resilience of the coconut is at an ebb. Today, we are faced with the gravest threat of all: Globalization. Our coconut oil exports are under siege from other oils such as palm, soya, corn and canola. This has depressed the price of the end-product, and the ripples of export setback are being felt everywhere in this faltering industry.

But there is still a chance. We can bounce back. We can make coconut oil a competitive product. However, we urgently need marketing and research and development, the three requisites for every successful product. Other countries subsidize these undertakings to elbow us out of the competition – our coco levy funds could painlessly accomplish the same results in the dog-eat-dog international marketplace. Why do we hesitate?

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I read it through, and I find that the recently announced agreement will create a perpetual trust fund from the coco levy funds locked away in those San Miguel shares. An industry wide body will then see to it that the income – and only the income – of the trust is used for the good of our coconut farmers and needed development. This isn’t the same as during the Marcos Dictatorship. Dysfunctional as our society may seem to be, at times, we are still an open democracy.

The problem, I believe, is that the detractors of the agreement see red when they see that former Governor Eduardo "Danding" Cojuangco apparently can live with it. They hate Cojuangco so much that they’ll rather declare the funds public, thus effectively torpedoing the agreement. What selfish bullshit.

Don’t these people see it? That here is a happy breakthrough: That money can finally be used to help our growers and resurrect an almost dying industry?

These mean souls see only Cojuangco and for that reason they desperately don’t want to see that agreement reach fruition.

In the meantime, what will they say? Sorry for the coconut farmers, but "justice" (they bleat) must be done? Sorry for the coconut industry? Who the hell cares if it collapses to the threat of globalization? Sorry, but it is important for them to get Danding Cojuangco!

To them it is no consequence that 16 years have passed and nothing has come of all the legal maneuverings and pasikot-sikot. Everything can be thrown out of the window as long as they relish the victory of getting Cojuangco.

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I’ve attacked and condemned Danding in the past as one of the Marcos tribe. I opposed him vigorously when he ran for president. But he’s stood up for himself. He’s come back strong from adversity and can walk with his head held high, standing up successfully to all the charges and malicious hearsay about him.

Over the past two years, he has steered San Miguel to levels of profitability that has earned the respect of both foreign and local stock analysts. He is today a business leader who is the peer, and can meet as such, with the business elite of the world.

Perhaps it’s time for the government to stop hating Cojuangco. Maybe, then, we can release San Miguel from the grubby hands of some in government and, finally, do something significant for the farmers and coconut production from a levy which will be freed from bondage.

Time is running out. This is not something that can be solved in the courtroom or by torpedoing in the media and other quarters a worthwhile agreement that can be workable and beneficent.

Sometimes, we are our own worst enemies. Full of frets, anger, conceit, amor propio, and the self-indulgence of nurturing hate.

We must not be moored in the past. We have to set aside our faults and weaknesses. Only then can we stride forward to meet the challenges of the present and the future. This is my plea.

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THE ROVING EYE . . . Poor suspended Sandiganbayan Presiding Justice Francis Garchitorena. But he brought the Supreme Court’s earnest ire on himself. It was his fault. Almost a year ago, I complained in this corner about the hundreds of cases that had not been resolved in the Sandiganbayan and had slept on the shelves for years gathering cobwebs. As everybody knows, "justice delayed is justice denied." Again, a month and a half ago, I said the same thing, as did others. Did Supervising Justice Garchitorena and the Sandiganbayan stir? Cases, pleas, motions, etc. continued to pile up. Now it has developed that Garchitorena himself has not resolved a single case! I sympathize with Francis whom I’ve known for years as an upright and forthright man. Yet, he was the Great Procrastinator. He was, possibly, too fastidious. And in the end, by his delays and fussiness, justice was not upheld . . . Indeed, what is happening to the Sandiganbayan? It’s supposed to be the national anti-graft tribunal. Yet, strange things have been occurring in that so-called august body. If Garchitorena is in trouble, now comes his enemy, nemesis, bête-noir Third Division Chairman Justice Anacleto Badoy who is hearing what has been dubbed the "case of the century" regarding the plunder charges against ex-President Joseph Estrada et al. Justice Badoy is again in the limelight. Last night, he was on television "news" for appearing to have resorted to the ruse of being "sick", so he could avoid reporters on his way to Television GMA-Seven. He was picked up by an ambulance from the Sandiganbayan, ostensibly to be brought to a hospital only to be brought to Channel 7 where he was interviewed by Mike Enriquez. Justice Badoy has done some strange things over the past few weeks. Whether these "queer" acts will affect the credibility of the proceedings in the plunder cases against Estrada is for the High Court to determine and judge. I understand there is a pending petition to inhibit Justice Badoy from these cases. The members of the High Court should seriously look not only into the grounds invoked in the petition but should also consider recent events involving Justice Badoy. In the end, the credibility of the proceedings in the plunder cases and the acceptance by the people of the judgment handed down will depend in the public’s perception of the judges hearing those landmark cases.