Hacienda Luisita

Militant farmers and their mentors have used the power of media and persuasion to depict the owners of the Hacienda Luisita sugar estate as feudal and exploitative. In fact the late President Cory Aquino, whose family owns the hacienda, was charged with going around the comprehensive land reform program that she had signed by choosing Stock Distribution Option (SDO) instead of distributing the land to the Farmer-Beneficiaries (FBs). It’s a burden that President Noynoy Aquino is being asked to give an opinion on.

Are the Luisita owners really as bad as they are being depicted? I don’t think so. They are businessmen, for sure, but I honestly think that they were also thinking of the welfare of their workers, not just their own interest, when they chose the SDO, and now, with farmers/beneficiaries, signed the Compromise Agreement. This is precisely the objective of   the   initiatives to improve the quality of life of these people and share the fruits of the land in perpetuity.

The land dispute has its roots in the purchase by Jose Cojuangco Sr. (father of President Cory Aquino), of 6,000 hectares of farmlands from Tabacalera in 1957, with loans from a foreign bank and the Government Service Insurance System. President Carlos P. Garcia approved the national guarantee for these loans by invoking social justice.

I can understand that the Cojuangcos would want to continue to possess the land, as most landowners would. In 1985, the government, under President Marcos, tried to retrieve the property and took the case to the Manila regional trial court; the court ruled in favor of the government.

The Cojuangcos elevated the issue to the Court of Appeals. Marcos was ousted in 1986, and when Cory Aquino was installed president, she declared agrarian reform to be the “centerpiece” of her administration, and caused the enactment of RA 6657 (the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program) in 1988. In 1989, the Cojuangcos asked the Court of Appeals to set aside the Manila RTC ruling, “on the ground,” writes my co-columnist at the STAR Satur Ocampo, “that the disputed lands had been placed under the CARP. They (Cojuangcos) got what they wanted. The case was dismissed.” 

Data coming from Luisita management recount the start of negotiations with the HLI farmworkers and supervisors. On May 11, 1989, a tri-party Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) containing compliance with the CARP through the Stock Distribution Option, was executed by Tarlac Development Corporation (TDC), Hacienda Luisita Incorporated (HLI), and 92.9 percent of the farmworkers. 

On Dec. 22, 2005, acting upon the complaint (filed in December 2004) of farmworker groups (AMBALA, United Luisita Workers Union and HIL Supervisors Group), PARC issued Resolution No. 2005-32-02 recalling/revoking the stock distribution agreement contained in the above-mentioned MOA.

On Feb. 1, 2006, HLI assailed said PARC resolution before the Supreme Court, under Case no. 171101, in which the High Court issued a Temporary Restraining Order pending resolution of the petition, which TRO is still effective at present.

 From February 2006 to December 2007, HLI and farmworkers’ representatives started engaging in talks about possible amicable settlements, with HLI specifying implementation of the MOA, and the latter insisting that farmers’ interests are met and protected.

Settlement discussions stalled in 2008. According to Atty. Nando Cojuangco, HLI management head, Luisita nevertheless continued compliance with the MOA “to show good faith,” by transferring titles of homelots to FBs. In November 2008, HLI counsel asked for a BIR ruling that transfer of titles to FBS be tax free. BIR ruled in the affirmative.    

To date, Nando told our media group two weeks ago in Manila, HLI has processed 30 homelots with Certificate of Authority to Register. “Delay is with the Register of Deeds who ran out of security paper to be used in issuing titles, and is adjusting to computerization of its processes. Another barangay is ongoing processing of titling.”

 In February, March, April and May 2010, HLI counsel started meeting leaders of AMBALA, ULWU and HLI Supervisory Group “to determine the current hardships of the farm workers and sentiments of the farmworkers regarding the continuation of amicable settlement.” Successive meetings were held to fine-tune the terms of compromise agreement and coordinating ground movements.

Finally, on August 6, 2010, HLI and officers of the three hacienda unions signed a Compromise Agreement (CA) which HLI submitted to the Supreme Court. Oppositors, mainly farmers who are not party to the signing of the CA, posed their opposition. The High Tribunal is now hearing the arguments of both parties.

Prior to the CA’s submittal to the SC, the CA’s signers subjected it to a census. As stated in the CA, the Farmworker Beneficiaries (FB) are given the option to stay with the Stock Distribution Option (SDO) contained in the Memorandum of Agreement of 1989 or choose productive agricultural lands, which will be given for free, as their mode of compliance with the CARP law. Furthermore, financial assistance amounting to P150 million will also be distributed among the FBs, which shall be released on a staggered basis pending the Supreme Court’s approval of the CA.

The result of the census, taken from August 6-10 showed that out of the 10,502 — the total number of farmworkers- shareholders — 8,401 or 80 percent signed the compromise agreement. Out of this number, 7,893 (98.95%), voted for SDO, while 508 (6.05%) voted for land distribution.

The outcome of the census, said lawyer Tony Ligon, spokesperson of HLI, “goes to show that after three years of negotiations, more farmworkers are already willing to move forward and resolve the long-protracted legal battle between them and the management.”

Windsor Andaya and Jose Julio Zuniga belong to the unions that filed a complaint with the Department of Agrarian Reform praying for the revocation of the MOA signed in 1989 by HLI, the Tarlac Development Corporation and 92.9 percent of the farm-workers. Now they’re singing a different tune.

Zuniga and Andaya favor the SDO as the farmers’ way out of their sad economic plight and as a form of investment. He told columnist Rina David, “the value of our shares will surely rise once we get over the legal problems. If we are able to get investors to set up factories inside the hacienda, then we will not only be able to provide jobs for our people, but we will also see the value of our shares rise.”

Zuniga and Andaya said farmers who chose land parcels over shares, were unable to buy inputs to make their land productive, so they decided to sell their property and move away.” Andaya told us that Hacienda Luisita is being painted as a “social justice issue,” when in truth, to the workers, “what matters more is jobs and income.”

Attorney Tony Ligon, HLI spokesperson, described the agreement as “the will of the people at Luisita.” With the census result, “We hope to end the long-standing dispute between the management and the farm workers so we could all move forward to more productive and peaceful years at Luisita.”

Nando said the Cojuangcos will abide by the decision of the Supreme Court.

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