Sumilao, Maysilo and the garden of lies

Agrarian reform in the Philippines is the illegitimate/bastard child of a prostituted law collectively raped and sired by legislators, landowners and businessmen who having failed to abort their offspring, are now disowning the legitimacy and claims of farmers.

 In the case of the Sumilao farmers, all parties involved or actively meddling have used every imaginable argument. But everyone seems to have ignored the most basic point of the matter. Land reform is about chopping up big tracts of land that owners don’t, won’t or can’t possibly till or develop on their own. The land is supposed to be turned over in small pieces to the farmers who in turn can till or use the land but don’t have the means to buy or own the land.

In between this great divide we are suppose to have the law and the Judiciary to implement this noble but painful edict meant to be made less painful by just compensation. The problem is the law in the Philippines including the judiciary is not absolute and certainly not pure. On occasion they even lack wisdom.

Having said that, I now ask: WHAT ARE CORPORATIONS DOING IN THIS PICTURE?

Regardless of what company name or corporation is involved, whether it’s involved in business or leisure, how did big business or corporations enter the picture that was supposed to be the exclusive domain of the land owners and their tenant farmers?

If the landowners and their tenants manage to reach a compromise and put up their cooperatives, that I believe is their prerogative. But corporations were never part of the play or included in the script. Because of individual and corporate greed many of our rice fields, wetlands as well as water resources have been taken over and converted into golf courses, piggeries, or resorts.

It is common knowledge among people working in the DENR and the DAR how businessmen have succeeded in hiring “gapang boys” or fixers to buy up land certificates, reconstitute titles, consolidate agrarian grants and reclassify lands. Villagers who resist are pressured by corrupted barangay captains even by mayors or congressmen. Those whose attachments to the land are greater than fear or money sometimes find themselves buried in their beloved piece of earth.

Rather than integrate the communities that have lived on the land, the selfish corporate bosses will elect to buy them out and move them out. As if the only people good enough to work with them are the people whose souls have already been sold to the company and assigned to hell.

Fortunately or unfortunately, there is God and there is divine justice. In the more unfortunate circumstance, blood is spilled when security forces brought in by developers decide to show what great slaves they are by killing villagers. Then the curse begins. In case the readers don’t know about it, the bible, from the time of Cain and Abel onwards always speaks of blood crying out for justice which God hears and that when blood is spilled on the ground it is cursed. This I know to be true. It is no accident that in every land dispute where blood is spilled those wanting to get the land often find their enemies growing in numbers. With more enemies there is more cost and with more cost the profit they hoped for becomes meaningless.

Many businessmen or corporations love to blame government for their woes as if government was there for their sole benefit and to be at their beck and call. It’s like blaming a woman for getting pregnant after you took advantage of her. Perhaps if corporations stayed out of agrarian reform property, life would be a lot simpler and more profitable.

In the case of the Maysilo estate, many observers of the Judiciary are now keeping notes on the case because of the unusual turn of events.  According to lovers of the law the decisions are becoming very interesting and may eventually unravel into a legal controversy. Prior to the two recent decisions on the case a recognizable public relations campaign was noticed by PR experts. The campaign was clearly aimed at creating an atmosphere that justified a decision based on consequences versus actual application of the law.

The campaign spelled out the impact on business, governance, territories and boundaries as well as the feared economic impact if the courts decided on the case simply on what the law stated. In effect the case has to be decided for the good of all and not the simple ownership rights of a few. As such this becomes one case where Justice was not blind but practical.

 A professor of law has confirmed that the obvious strategy and maneuver at the moment is to play “judiciary ping-pong” or to get the cases tossed back and forth until one party all but dies out.

Given the growing number of people closely studying the case of the Maysilo estate, I wish Chief Justice Puno could organize a judicial review of the entire case including the various parties and lawyers who represented and misrepresented the parties as well as the law. Having eaten up so much time, so much resource, it’s only right to hunt down the greedy and the corrupt. Let one of the long and winding case come back to haunt those who delayed justice.