By JANESS ANN J. ELLAO
“The farm workers of Hacienda Luisita had been through so many referendums already. All of these were merely used by the Cojuangco family to deceive the farm workers and keep the land.” – Lito Bais United Luisita Workers Union acting chairperson.
By JANESS ANN J. ELLAO, MARYA SALAMAT and ANNE MARXZE D. UMIL
After playing tough against the Luisita SDO during the first oral argument, the SC justices seemed to have “retreated” during the second hearing, forming a mediation panel for a “happy compromise.” The peasants’ desire for actual distribution of land, which the peasants say is no longer negotiable, should have been clear by now.
By LYN V. RAMO
“The president cannot feign neutrality in this issue, for his silence and inaction will mean an implicit endorsement of the unjust compromise deal orchestrated by Cojuangco-owned HLI,” the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines said in a statement.
Maximo Sebastian found himself joining the day long protest rally in front of the Supreme Court (SC) last August 18. He was calling on the magistrates to reject Hacienda Luisita Inc’s (HLI) petition against the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council decision to junk the sugar estate’s stock distribution option (SDO) scheme.
Slideshow: For Land and Justice
A solidarity mass for the farm workers of Hacienda Luisita, officiated by Auxiliary Bishop of Manila Bp. Teodoro Bacani, was held in Sto. Domingo Church, Quezon City, on Tuesday — a day before the Supreme Court will hold oral arguments on the petition for certiorari filed by the Hacienda Luisita Inc. (HLI) management against the 2005 resolution of the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council (PARC) and Department of Agrarian Reform revoking the SDO and ordering the distribution of land to the farm workers.
Misery Still
By CAROL PAGADUAN-ARAULLO Streetwise | BusinessWorld Posted by Bulatlat.com The so-called compromise agreement announced by the management of the Cojuangco-owned Hacienda Luisita Inc. (HLI) comes ahead of an upcoming decision of the Supreme Court on the legality of the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council (PARC) decision to revoke the 16-year-old stock distribution option (SDO). The SDO…
By BENJIE OLIVEROS Analysis Bulatlat.com The Hacienda Luisita agrarian dispute has been hitting the headlines recently. And it is not because the land has been distributed to the farmworkers in fulfillment of the 1957 loan agreement between the Cojuangco family and the government, and the order of the court in 1985. Nor is it about…
The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) yesterday condemned the “compromise deal” forged by the management of the Hacienda Luisita Inc. (HLI), calling it “a devious scheme to preserve the decades-old Cojuangco land monopoly in Tarlac and continue subjecting the peasants and farm workers to semifeudal exploitation and oppression.” “The so-called deal was deviously cooked…
By MARYA SALAMAT
“Despite the media-created belief that positive change for the Filipino peasantry would be possible under the Aquino administration, we are discouraged by Noynoy’s frequent attempts to dissociate himself from the Hacienda Luisita problem and in refusing to admit to the failure of CARP [Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program] despite the dehumanizing plight to which it has consigned the majority of farmers,” a peasant leader said.