P-Noy Presidency hangs on Luisita

There’s a far nobler cause than tax-on-toll for Noynoy Aquino to bet his enormous political capital. And that is to talk his Cojuangco family into parceling their vast sugar land to farmhands. VAT on expressway charges can fetch a few billion pesos a year, for the President to feed the poor. But distributing his Hacienda Luisita to 10,700 landless tillers would have lasting impact.

Surely P-Noy is mulling the idea. In fact, he had promised during the election run to make kinsmen transfer whatever portion of the 6,500-hectare estate legally is for agrarian reform. He even reportedly set a deadline — five years — to do it. To have inspired the following of 40,000 campaign volunteers, P-Noy must be one to keep his word.

Of late, though, could presidential aides be misreading P-Noy? As if expecting his change of heart, they keep laying three predicates. One, that P-Noy owns only less than one percent of Hacienda Luisita Inc. to matter in a Cojuangco family council. Too, that he had no hand in the recent HLI poll of tenants on a stock distribution option, whose constitutionality is under fire. And, that initial payment of P20 million to 7,400 tenants who prefer the SDO, as if pre-empting the Supreme Court, is a private matter between HLI and them.

But P-Noy must know what’s right. The agrarian reform act, passed under his President-mom, calls for land reallocation, not corporate shares. P-Noy has declared through spokesmen that whatever is the law, however hard it may be for his relatives, he will enforce it. Subalterns had thought that P-Noy would avoid Hacienda Luisita events for a while. But needing to know first-hand what’s happening, he went to visit last weekend.

Raised by parents Ninoy and Cory Aquino and exposed to world leaders, P-Noy must have a vision for the nation. He realizes too the power of personal example. When on his first day in office he shunned VIP car sirens, hundreds surrendered their elitist, illegal toys. When the President of next-door Indonesia jailed a son’s father-in-law for graft, the bureaucracy instantly self-disciplined, and global trust soared. Once P-Noy causes the redistribution of his family’s estate, other rich landowners would follow suit. P-Noy could then move on to prod another set of kin, in San Miguel Corp., to give up their contested 21-percent shares to copra farmers.

Immediately the message would spread that social justice is possible after all in godforsaken Philippines. The 35-year communist insurgency that springs from agrarian unrest would have no more reason for being. Peace would dawn at last. The world would take notice. Investments would thrive. P-Noy’s 88-percent trust rating would not go “nowhere but down,” but surge even higher. Admiring his sacrifice, Filipinos loyally would follow him anywhere. His legacy would be made. He would change the country forever.

*   *   *

Readers avidly reacted to last week’s item on the need to publish the names, pay and perks of Gloria M. Arroyo’s midnight political appointees. A sampling:

Reynaldo W. Hermogenes: “Make it all government execs. Set up a website for it. Only those who have something to hide will object.”

Roger Manalastas: “How about photos of (MWSS trustees) Oscar O. Garcia, Diosdado Jose M. Allado, Alfredo C. Reyes, Ferdinand P. Mahusay, Lorenzo S. Sulaik, Aurora R. Arnaez, and Macra A. Cruz — to post on YouTube, for not heeding P-Noy’s call to quit if they have any shame left?”

Jerry Quibilan: “Congrats to the audit commission for reporting, for the first time, the 40 highest paid government execs.”

Alan Davis: “Government agency MWSS openly violates the law.”

Cynthia B: “If directors in GOCCs and GFIs are not paid extraordinarily well, why do they cling to their posts even beyond their appointer-President’s term?”

Narciso Alano: “MWSS trustees, while appropriating for themselves 30 months’ pay a year, advised the public during water crises: save water, pray for rain. Truly shameless!”

The column on theft of the agricultural competitiveness enhancement fund elicited many reactions as well, like:

TRV: “You are right on the button: agri-officials themselves filch the ACEF. New Secretary Alcala faces a Herculean task of overhauling it. He will be dealing with the very crooks who practice the omerta code; no one will spill the beans since all of them are involved.”

Nick Anderson: “I’m sure you’ve heard: the architects of the scam are getting promoted. One, a regional head who extorted advance kickbacks from bidders, will soon be USec.”

Jose Dinoy: “The ex-USec who masterminded the racket had demanded kickbacks from every contractor. He got his position by closeness to the former First Gentleman.”

Ex-governor Manny Piñol: “The DA should report how many ACEF projects truly succeeded, how many farm-to-market roads were paved, and how much was spent through so-called ‘downloading’.”

Boni Cambel: “Until someone hangs for it, such greed will persist.”

*   *   *

Three things pend in the NAIA Terminal-3 affair. First, an appraisal of structural stability, minus costs to fix the flaws if feasible, would settle the just compensation for builders Piatco-Fraport. Second, a probe of the payoffs, mainly to the owners (supposedly spouses using familiar initials) of Virgin Islands front companies Mainland Global and Jetstream Pacific, would resolve the corruption angle. Lastly, the solution once and for all of the murders of assistant solicitor general Nestor Ballocillo and son, would pay the blood debt.

*   *   *

”What cannot be measured cannot be corrupted.” Shafts of Light, Fr. Guido Arguelles, SJ

*   *   *

E-mail: [email protected]