Reform group to Aquino: Break cycle of abuse and injustice in HLI, recognize farmers’ right to land

News Release
17 August 2010

“The current situation in Hacienda Luisita offers Noynoy an opportunity to break the cycle of abuse the farm workers have been experiencing for more than half a century and correct the historical injustice his family has committed against them. He should not let this chance go to waste.”

This was the statement of Pagbabago! People’s Movement for Change as the reform advocacy group urged President Benigno Simeon “Noynoy” Aquino III to step in on the decades-long land dispute between his family and around 10,000 farm workers of Hacienda Luisita Inc. (HLI) in Tarlac, and to take heed of the latter’s call for actual distribution of the 6,453-hectare land to farmer-beneficiaries.

“As president, Noynoy has the power to put a stop to the unfair treatment of farm workers in HLI, as well as to uplift the farm workers from their miserable condition,” Pagbabago co-chairperson Judy Taguiwalo said.

“His statement, however, which sounded as if he is washing his hands off the land dispute, opposes the very essence of being a president,” Taguiwalo said.

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“What he has to do is very simple: uphold the law and the right of the farm workers to own and till land. He simply has to recognize that the stock distribution option (SDO) being implemented as an agrarian reform program in Hacienda Luisita is what prevents the farm workers from attaining social justice, and implement the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council (PARC)’s and the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR)’s recommendation distribute actual agricultural lands instead of stocks,” Taguiwalo further said.

Pagbabago pointed out that the Hacienda Luisita farmers should have already owned the agricultural land in Tarlac and the current dispute could have been avoided if not for the cunning manipulations done by the Cojuangco family in the past to maintain their hold on the property worth billions of pesos.

Jose Cojuangco Sr. did not deliver on his obligation to distribute land in exchange for the government and foreign loans amounting to millions of pesos he was given in 1957. The distribution of actual land was again prevented from occurring when former President Corazon Aquino – Noynoy Aquino’s mother – implemented the SDO as a “land reform” scheme under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) in 1988 and applied it to HLI. When the PARC and the DAR ruled that the HLI management broke a number of laws, including CARP, and ordered it to stop the implementation of SDO, the Cojuangcos asked the Supreme Court to issue a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO).

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on the Hacienda Luisita issue on Aug. 18. The HLI management, however, tried to preempt the outcome of the oral arguments by concocting a dubious deal in which the farm workers are again the ones on the losing end.

“Allowing the compromise agreement to be the answer to the land dispute is like sealing the deal for farmers to experience another round in the cycle of abuse. It reflects Noynoy’s failure to recognize the real roots of the problem, and thus, opens the possibility for another bloodbath to happen like the HLI massacre,” Taguiwalo said.
Pagbabago said that the issue of Hacienda Luisita will test President Aquino’s leadership.

“He should bear in mind that he is not ‘Noynoy the landlord’ anymore; he is now ‘Noynoy the president,’ the person who took an oath not very long ago to always put people first before himself, duty before personal interest,” Taguiwalo said. (Bulatlat.com)

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