Hacienda Luisita ruling: Another bad timing?

The news reports coming from Internet sources and ABS-CBN say that 14 Justices of the Supreme Court ruled once and for all the decades long dispute over the Hacienda Luisita, agreeing on a motion for reconsideration to redistribute the vast Sugar Plantation owned by the Cojuangco family, which Pres. Benigno “PNoy” Aquino, III belongs to. The ruling also compels the Cojuangco Family to pay the farmers P1.3 billion.

 At this point, let me warn our readers once more not to paint a political picture into this controversy because I’m already getting texts that this ruling could be the Supreme Court’s way to get back at Pres. Aquino, who has only shown contempt against the SC. One has to know the history of how the Cojuangcos were able to secure this land and then with that knowledge, you can clearly make your own judgment on this controversy.

 If you read the book of Cecilio Arillo, “Greed and Betrayal” and his new book, which I’m still reading, “A Country Imperiled,” you will see the history of how the Hacienda Luisita landed in the hands of the Cojuangco family. I already wrote that story sometime ago and I will only repeat it if my readers request me to do so.

 Let me just point out that the Cojuangcos got the land belonging to the Tabacalera with a loan from the GSIS on the condition that the land be distributed to the tenants within 10 years. But within those 10 years, the late Sen. Benigno Aquino married Cory Cojuangco and he became the administrator of the Hacienda Luisita and eventually entered politics and became a senator. Being a senator in this country, you can do what you want with any government institution, including the GSIS.

 But still the government sued to let the Cojuangcos distribute this land according to the original deal that gave them the 6,000-hectare sugar land. But call it bad timing for the courts that when the judgment on Hacienda Luisita was promulgated, it came three days after the late Sen. Ninoy Aquino was sentenced to death by musketry by a kangaroo court during the Martial Law years. So it was easy enough for the Cojuangco family to call that court ruling as harassment against Aquino. But like author Cecillo Arillo pointed out, it was just bad timing.

 Now that this SC Ruling on the Hacienda Luisita is out, I’m sure that the pro-PNoy supporters would dub it as part of the tug-of-war between Pres. Aquino and the SC. You may call it a bad timing again. But I dare say that it is time to resolve this issue once and for all. The Hacienda Luisita controversy has been at the core of our political life since the 1960s. This case is clear proof of the injustice happening around our country.

 How could such a simple case be dragged for so many decades? The answer is of course crystal clear. In this country, if you are rich and powerful, you can do anything that you want. The Cojuangcos are rich and politically powerful hence it took this long for this case to be resolved. So we wait with bated breath as to how the Cojuangco family would react to this SC ruling.

 Meanwhile, in another issue still linked to the Cojuangco family, Bohol Rep. Rene Relampagos has filed a bill to rename the Epifanio delos Santos Avenue (EDSA) into the Cory Aquino Avenue, but this was met with resistance from the opposition led by Rep. Edcel Lagman who suggested that instead of EDSA, Rep. Relampagos should name the new expensive freeway called the SCTEX (Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway) after Cory Aquino.

 I fully agree that the 24-kilometer EDSA should not be changed or renamed, as it is historic for the Filipino people. The EDSA Revolt was so called because it happened along EDSA. This road used to be called Highway 54 and was named after Epifanio delos Santos, a historian, but not much is known about the man. But like it or not, two historic EDSA revolts happened in that place, hence you can say that it has secured its place in Philippine history.

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 Two days ago was the second anniversary of the Maguindanao massacre. Again we are front row witnesses to this drama, which is now in the hands of our snail-paced judicial system. We just heard PNoy issue a “guarantee” to former Pres. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo that under his presidency, she would get a fair trial. But alas this President is mum on how to go about with the Maguindanao massacre case in court.

 I was in Dubai when news of the massacre was headlined in that country, as well as other countries. That’s because this massacre killed 34 journalists in one spot, the only time that so many journalists were killed in one incident. This is why the world’s journalists were so horrified that this took place in the Philippines, which they consider the second most dangerous place for a journalist after Iraq.

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