Aquino says Luisita deal in the works

by Fel V. Maragay


SENATOR Benigno Aquino III yesterday bared a plan to distribute the shareholdings of the Aquino and Cojuangco families to 10,000 farmers who are part-owners of Hacienda Luisita to resolve a decades-old dispute that threatens to undermine his bid for the presidency.

Aquino said he discussed the plan with the members of his clan in a meeting in Makati City Tuesday night in the face of mounting pressure from farmers and the government to settle the row.

Aquino, the Liberal Party standard-bearer, said it was not easy to work out a transfer plan because Hacienda Luisita Inc., which manages the 5,000-hectare estate, was saddled with debt.

“We are thinking of a way by which we can transfer the assets [to the farmers], and preferably free of debt,’’ he said in a telephone interview.

“We will help them maximize the profitability of their holdings.”

He said if the farmers and the Aquino and Cojuangco families agreed on the terms, the transfer plan could be carried out as a totally private initiative within the company.

Aquino has always maintained that he is not in a position to address the grievances of the Luisita farmers because he and his sisters owned a mere 4.3 percent of the company, which they had inherited from their mother, the late President Corazon Cojuangco Aquino.

Corazon was one of the six children of the late Jose Cojuangco Sr., who originally owned the hacienda. As a result of the stock distribution option carried out in l989, the farmer-beneficiaries now own 34 percent of Hacienda Luisita Inc.

Earlier this week, Malacañang stepped into the conflict by ordering Agrarian Reform Secretary Nasser Pangandaman to resolve any pending land dispute involving the property, which now consists of sugar and corn plantations, an industrial park and a commercial center.

But Aquino doubted if the Palace’s intervention would hasten the resolution of the dispute because the case remained pending with the Supreme Court.

The case stemmed from a 2004 decision of the Agrarian Reform Department revoking the stock distribution plan to pave the way for the parceling of land in the property among legitimate tenant-farmers under the agrarian reform program. But the property’s management questioned the ruling all the way to the Supreme Court.

“In the exercise of the right of the company, the management filed before the Supreme Court a petition questioning the order of [the department]. So it is sub judice and is not part of the executive function,” Aquino said.

He said he suspected politics had something to do with the Palace decision to intervene because he had been “very critical of the administration.”

“The point is, can we solve the problems of the farmer-beneficiaries with the entry of politics?” Aquino said.

“If we are talking of the old issue, that is within the purview of the judiciary. It is before the Supreme Court. Not a co-equal branch, not the Senate, not Congress, not the executive can tell the Supreme Court how to decide. That is against the law.”


Source: http://www.manilastandardtoday.com/insideNews.htm?f=/2009/november/19/news5.isx&d=/2009/november/19