SC Justices Demolish Cojuangco-Aquinos’ Justifications for Giving Farmers ‘Pieces of Paper’ Instead of Land

“Why will the rights of old workers be diluted?” Abad asked. The new workers, he explained, were not tillers of the hacienda at the start of SDO in 1989. As such, they did not have lands to lose in exchange for shares.

And because HLI only assigned shares to workers who actually worked and because it determined who could work and for how long, the distribution of shares became the company’s tool to control the workers. Associate justice Abad asked Asuncion of HLI: “Where did you get the right to use shares as incentive system determined by the company?”

Legal Basis for Revoking SDO

Had the HLI followed the law, particularly on the distribution of shares of stocks from three months to three years after the SDO was signed, the number of beneficiaries would not have ballooned to 10,502 today from just about 6,000 in 1989, some of the justices argued.

This violation of the CARP-prescribed length of stock distribution, or any non-compliance of Section 31 in CARP, is ultimately a ground for revoking the SDO in Luisita, they said. Especially since, as it turned out, the HLI has “not received a certificate of compliance” with CARP from the DAR.

This would have been issued right after all stocks are distributed to farmer-beneficiaries within a three-year period. But this did not happen because shares were distributed in 15 years. Without the certification from DAR, the lands should have been subject to compulsory government acquisition for redistribution to tillers, some of the justices explained.

“Had you implemented SDO within the (stipulated) two-year period, we would not have been here,” Associate Justice Diosdado Peralta told HLI lawyers. He said HLI violated Sections 5, 11 and 12 of Administrative Order No. 10, which pertains to implementing SDO under CARP. Peralta said these are grounds for revocation of the SDO.

“The farm should not have been fragmented,” Peralta added, referring specifically to the 500 hectares that the HLI sold to a subsidiary, another 80 hectares that became SCTEX, and another 184 hectares transferred to business partner RCBC, a commercial bank. There were hundreds more of hectares of land under SDO that went missing in the Cojuangco’s ‘compromise agreement.’

But HLI’s lawyers countered that the PARC has no authority to revoke the SDO and that only the judiciary has an authority to review or revoke contracts. This argument was countered by at least two points from the justices.

One, the absence of certificate of compliance issued to HLI would mean “the case could not be ripe for judicial review.” According to Associate Justice Lucas Bersamin, the SDO remains an administrative matter, which falls under the jurisdiction of PARC.

“Everything is administrative because you were not issued certificate of compliance, meaning you don’t have to go to the court of law yet,” Bersamin said.

But even if everything is not “still administrative,” Asuncion’s argument against PARC’s authority in revoking the SDO and the need instead for a judicial authority to do it – citing the non-impairment clause in the Bill of Rights, which says, in Section 10, that no law shall be passed impairing the obligation of contracts — crumbled when Associate Justice Conchita Carpio-Morales reminded Asuncion that violations of this clause apply only to laws.

“Are the actions of PARC legislative?” Morales asked. After some awkward exchanges, Asuncion conceded that “the actions of PARC are not legislative.”

Towards the end of the argument with HLI lawyer, Chief Justice Renato Corona reminded everybody that land reform should be implemented “in the context of social justice” and that the “land should belong to the tiller.”

And in a sign perhaps of more trouble ahead for the Cojuangco-Aquinos, Corona asked: “Is it land reform to just give farmers a piece of paper?” (Bulatlat.com)