HACIENDA Luisita Inc., owned by the family of presidential aspirant Senator Benigno Aquino III, is bent on evicting 5,000 “trespassers” inside its sugar estate in Tarlac after Nov. 15.Aquino yesterday declined to comment on the eviction plans because of an ongoing court case, but criticized leftist groups for using the issue against him.
A hacienda spokesman, Antonio Ligon, said the company would evict the illegal farm workers after it completed its inventory of legitimate beneficiaries under the stock distribution option allowed by the agrarian reform program.
The company would retain only the farmers and their dependents who took part in the 1989 referendum to decide how land reform would be applied to the 4,500-hectare estate, which has been owned by the Cojuangco clan for generations.
“About 96 percent of the original tillers wanted the stock distribution option than the distribution of lands under the agrarian reform program,” Ligon said.
He said the tillers and millers listed in the official records of Tarlac Development Co., which created Hacienda Luisita Inc., were recognized as the lawful farmers allowed to occupy the land, and not the estimated 5,000 trespassers mostly from Nueva Ecija and Bulacan.
Ligon said the company’s board decided in December 2008 to identify the lawful farmers and their family members and to weed out trespassers.
“There is so much unrest inside the estate because of the presence of the illegal farmers [who] sued the corporation [before the Supreme Court],” he said.
Ligon said lax security had allowed unlawful farmers to enter the Cojuangco estate, organize a group called the United Luisita Union Workers, and even rent out a parcel of land to a Taiwanese watermelon and melon contractor.
The company has imposed a Nov. 15 deadline for farmer-beneficiaries to register.
The union has resisted the registration order because of its pending case before the Supreme Court, but Ligon said the company had a legal basis to impose its directives.
“The circular has nothing to do with the [Supreme Court] case or with the Department of Agrarian Reform. The chaos—who among the farmers are the lawful tillers or not—is the issue here,” he said.
Aquino yesterday said it would be “inappropriate” for him to comment on the eviction because of the ongoing case.
But he also criticized the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan or Bayan for using the issue against him as a presidential aspirant, and for pressing the Cojuangco and Aquino families to give in to the farmer’s demands.
Earlier, Anakpawis party-list Rep. Rafael Mariano criticized a plan by Jose Cojuangco, Aquino’s uncle, to donate part of Hacienda Luisita to a sports training center, saying it was aimed at sidestepping its legal disputes with farmers.
But Aquino said there were no more tenants in the hacienda because all farmers had signed an agreement in 1989 favoring a stock distribution option under which they would have a share of estate’s harvests in the form of dividends.
He said the farmers were employed as workers of the agri-industrial estate and entitled to regular wages and other rights under a collective bargaining agreement. With Fel V. Maragay
Source: http://www.manilastandardtoday.com/insideNews.htm?f=2009/november/5/news1.isx&d=/2009/november/5
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