SC TRO Slams Luisita Farmers' Dream to Own Land

BY DABET CASTAÑEDA

Posted 7:50 p.m. June 16, 2006

The Supreme Court (SC) announced today it has issued a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) on the distribution of the 4,915 has. of the Hacienda Luisita sugar plantation to the 5,498 farmer beneficiaries.

The decision comes in the wake of Agrarian Reform Sec. Nasser Pangandaman's announcement last June 5 that the controversial Hacienda Luisita land will be distributed to farmers this month.

In a telephone interview with Bulatlat, Joseph Canlas, chairperson of the Alyansa ng Magbubukid sa Gitnang Luzon (AMGL or Alliance of Central Luzon Peasants), said the SC decision proves once again how the farmers are always at the losing end of court battles. He said it also makes DAR and the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council (PARC) inutile in implementing the CARP.

The SC acted on an urgent motion filed by Hacienda Luisita, Inc. (HLI) last May 18 and stopped PARC from implementing its coverage of the vast sugar estate owned by the family of former President Corazon Cojuangco-Aquino. The decision, dated June 14, was released to media only today.

PARC ruled with finality on Dec. 22 last year the revocation of HLI's 16-year Stock Distribution Plan (SDP), an option under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) that allows landowners to run their landholdings as corporations. In the said option, stocks instead of land are distributed to farmer-beneficiaries.

The farmer-beneficiaries petitioned for the revocation of HLI's SDP in 2003.

Farm and mill workers of the sugar estate staged a simultaneous strike starting Nov. 6, 2004. DAR acted on the petition in late 2004 after seven farmers-beneficiaries and their supporters were massacred on Nov. 16 of the same year in one of the most violent picketline dispersals in Philippine history. Bulatlat

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