Hacienda Luisita is the bone of contention

You have to be blind not to see that the President Noy-CJ Renato Corona is a conflict about Hacienda Luisita. The rest is subterfuge. On one hand you have a president whose family owns Hacienda Luisita, on the other you have a chief justice in whose wake the Hacienda Luisita has finally returned the land to the farmers as stipulated in the contract that allowed the family to use it. Chief Justice Corona made the decision even if a Cojuangco is in power. That sucks!

 I was surprised when Presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda declared soon after the decision that “there will be no motion for reconsideration.” Why is a government spokesman speaking in behalf of the Cojuangco family? I thought President Noy had divested his part in the ownership when he became the President of the Philippines. It seems to me that the statement should have come from the Cojuangco family who owns the land.

Was that a slip of the tongue or was it for real? Is Lacierda now also the spokesman for the Cojuangco family? Is the Hacienda Luisita — public or private? He also added that in the absence of any further appeal to the Supreme Court decision Hacienda Luisita will be distributed among 6,296 farmers. 

Good. But before making the statement, the presidential spokesman also revealed that they would have to consult first with the President and Lacierda’s statement will depend on what he will say about it.

We may not have been privy to what the president said after the SC decision but we can guess what it was. Recent events with the executive going hammer and tongs against the judiciary, hint at what it might have been. The SC decision orders the owners of Hacienda Luisita not only to distribute the land among the farmers, it also ordered the President’s family to pay P1.33 billion to the farmer-beneficiaries.

This will be a financial catastrophe to the family but it is also a decision that will have far reaching consequences on government policy if the rule of law is followed. Since there is no motion for reconsideration, it should now be implemented unless political maneuvering intervenes, one of them being the impeachment of Chief Justice Corona.

The decision allowed farmer stockholders to choose whether to be paid in land or remain stockholders of Hacienda Luisita.

Interestingly, the vote for the decision was unanimous with one abstention — Justice Antonio T. Carpio who is said to be Aquino’s candidate for Chief Justice if Corona is removed. 

The Corona-led Supreme Court has been praised for its courage in laying down a decision against a powerful family, one of whose members is the President who is all-powerful. President Noynoy must know that this is a triumph for the disadvantaged and powerless people that he calls his boss. Let’s see what he does for his boss.

I don’t know if the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) will be “surveyed” but the farmers group has hailed the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision as “a victory of the militant struggle of Hacienda Luisita farmworkers.” Since the poor in the Philippines greatly outnumber the rich, a properly conducted survey should reveal a favorable sentiment for the Supreme Court decision made under the wake of the beleaguered Corona.

The trouble is that the workers’ triumph over the landowner will be buried in the Senate impeachment proceedings over so many other issues, some of them depressingly personal. Those of us who know better should make sure that focus on the Hacienda Luisita decision is not lost because after everything has been said and done “this is the bone of contention.” 

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I remember during the protests against Marcos before he declared martial law students chanting slogans against what they called fascism and feudalism. It was the banner that the young people waved high in the First Quarter Storm. Alas, the young have become old and we need the next generation’s young to take up a forgotten cause.

I find Rich Gibson’s description of fascism in his website helpful in appreciating the Supreme Court’s decision on Hacienda Luisita and resonates with what is happening in the Philippines today.

“Fascism is the unchecked rule of a class of the privileged, or relatively rich, in power — a full-scale assault on poor and working people. (The strikers shot and killed in Hacienda Luisita). Parliamentary institutions are usually set aside, or so demeaned as to be meaningless. (The 188-vote by congressmen who did not even read what they were told to sign because of the unprecedented haste). The Holocaust was legal.”

“Elites issue direct orders, frequently through a populist leader. (Damn the Cojuangco owned Pulse Asia, SWS). Wages, any social safety net, working hour laws, labor laws; all come under legal (and extra-legal) attack. The stick replaces the carrot. Even between capitalists of the same nation, struggle intensifies.

Fascism in its early stages has been popular among masses of people mystified by nationalism, racism, and sexism. (In the Philippines the euphemism is the fight against corruption!) These ideas are key to the construction of fascism. But, “war means work” for some, which may also explain its historical popularity.

Fascism is an element of the modern era, which carries forward elements of feudalism. Fascism has taken the form of state capitalism in Japan, Germany, and in more sophisticated ways, the Soviet Union in the Stalin era. But fascism has also grown in less developed countries, Romania, Bulgaria, most of Eastern Europe, Cambodia, Argentina, Guatemala, Chile; and taken significantly different forms.”

There you are — for those still in doubt what Filipinos should fight for. It is not about P-Noy vs. GMA, much less between P-Noy vs. Renato Corona.

It is about strengthening democratic institutions like due process, rule of law, presumption of innocence and the check and balance between the three branches of government all of which are under assault today. But as Gibson adds fascism is not inevitable. It can be fought back.