A 29-year-old question

“WHAT IS happening to our country?”

That was how some people reacted to what Justice Conchita Carpio-Morales dubs as “the biggest joke to hit the century”: a Supreme Court decision saying Eduardo Cojuangco Jr. didn’t dip into coconut levies to pocket 16.2 million shares in San Miguel Corp.

“What is happening to our country?” is in fact a 29-year-old question. On July 21, 1982, gunmen ambushed in New Manila, the country’s most credible critic against the Marcos regime’s coconut levy, former Vice President Emmanuel Pelaez. By then, Presidential Decree 275 had wrung hefty coco taxes, but Section 5 declared these to be private funds. Pelaez took six bullets. His driver of 31 years was killed. The gunmen and mastermind(s) were never tracked down. At the operating room’s door, he asked Quezon City’s Police chief Tomas Karingal, “What’s happening to our country?”

Over 10 million Filipinos in 68 provinces depend on the palm for livelihood. The tree has multiple uses, including as Palm Sunday fronds.

The 7-4-4 Supreme Court decision capped “a difficult struggle of nearly 30 years … and vindicated Eduardo Cojuangco,” claimed former Justice Secretary Estelito Mendoza.

It was a “terrible defeat” for Corazon Aquino, said Sen. Joker Arroyo. Cory’s first executive order sought to recover “ill-gotten wealth.”

The decision enables Cojuangco to cash out of San Miguel, stock analysts say. It shreds writs of sequestration over his shares, weeks before SMC launches an $850-million capital-raising activity.

Pelaez summed up the basic issue in a 1981 speech to the Mindanao Business Forum. Martial law bayonets extorted ever heavier levies on beggared coconut farmers, he pointed out. Justice required that those funds be restituted.

In their mid-1990 letter, titled “Preferential Option for the Poor,” Ricardo Cardinal Vidal and 96 other Catholic leaders wrote: “Levies were taxes imposed on farmers through abuse of state power… These are public funds” and should be returned to the treasury.

Three decades later, this core issue has re-emerged. The Supreme Court majority zealously defended Cojuangco’s “rights.” But where in the 73-page decision are the rights of small coconut planters safeguarded?

“Where is the farmers’ money?” asked human rights lawyer Theodore Te. The Court said the money Cojuangco used to snap up 16.2 million SMC shares was a loan. “It wasn’t explained where the coco levy funds went,” Te pointed out.

Under its new leadership, the Presidential Commission on Good Government will file a motion for consideration. So will other coconut farmers groups.

We still have to download the dissenting opinions of Justices Maria Lourdes Sereno, Arturo Brion and Jose Mendoza. We have read the lucid 81-page dissent of Justice Carpio-Morales.

“The true measure of justice can be found in the dissenting opinion of Justice Carpio-Morales,” an Inquirer editorial noted. “(She) presents a comprehensive overview … and offers a masterly analysis of the issues at stake.”

May we pay Justice Caprio-Morales the irreverent but heartfelt accolade accorded by many to her predecessor, the late Justice Cecilia Muñoz-Palma? “Tiene cojones,” they said of the first woman Supreme Court justice. She has balls.

“In a court of male—and cowed—lapdogs, Palma flayed the dictatorship’s abuses, from its fraudulent ‘Citizens Assembly’ to suppression of liberties,” Viewpoint noted last Feb. 12. You see the same burnished steel in Carpio-Morales’ 31-point concise summary of “established facts.”

Here are excerpts:

“The lone buyer (of Ayala SMC shares) was Eduardo Cojuangco Jr. No private funds were shown to have been used in purchasing them. Cojuangco used proceeds of loans (borrowings from Coconut Industry Investment Fund and United Coconut Planters Bank).

“Coconut levy funds are prima facie public funds. The same holds true with corporations formed and organized from coconut levy funds. All assets therefrom are fruits of funds with public roots… Absent any contrary evidence, the subject SMC shares remained public in character…

“[These] shares were registered, not only in Cojuangco’s name, but also in the name of the Cojuangco companies… Circumstances indicate that the Cojuangco companies are ‘dummies’ or manipulated instruments.”

Over 44 firms are cited in the decision. Cojuangco is the owner of SMC shares registered in the name of Primavera Farms Inc., Silver Leaf Plantations Inc. and Meadowlark Plantations Inc. where 99.6 percent of shares are held in trust by lawyer Jose C. Concepcion and others.

“[They] executed Voting Trust Agreements in favor of Cojuangco. [These] represent almost half of the total subject SMC shares… Other purportedly registered stockholders of the Cojuangco companies did not stake a claim over SMC shares…

“Cojuangco was president and member of the UCPB board of directors and director of the Philippine Coconut Authority, inter alia, during the Marcos administration… On Feb. 25, 1986, Cojuangco left the Philippines with former President Ferdinand Marcos.”

Various laws, from the Corporation Code to the Anti-Graft Law, prohibit an official from using power for personal advantage and “self dealing.” “No evidence was shown to discharge the burden of Cojuangco, as a fiduciary, to demonstrate that the loans were regularly entered into…”

Carpio-Morales “proffered” the suggestion that “the Cojuangco et al. block be declared owned by government in trust for all coconut farmers and ordered reconveyed to government.”

Beggared coconut farmers meanwhile ask the 29-year-old question: “What is happening to our country now?”