A startling response to Luisita decision

After initial hesitation and messages of obfuscation, the Aquino administration has directed government lawyers to try to overturn a recent Supreme Court decision ordering a new referendum in the Cojuangco family-owned Hacienda Luisita where hacienda workers can decide whether they prefer shares of stocks or the redistribution of land.

Malacañang’s unexpected decision to appeal the Court’s decision was announced at a press briefing on Monday at the Department of Agrarian Reform. The announcement said that, acting upon President Aquino’s orders, Agrarian Reform Secretary Virgilio de los Reyes and Solicitor General Anselmo Diaz would file a motion for reconsideration of the July 5 decision. It said that land redistribution was the proper action under the 1988 Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law.

What made the decision to appeal startling was that it followed an earlier statement by Presidential Spokesperson Edwin Lacierda that the President had divested himself of his interest in Hacienda Luisita, and the government was ready to abide by the Court’s decision. This was seen to mean that the President was washing his hands of the decision.

Whether or not the Cojuangco family interests in the hacienda were considered in the decision to appeal was indicated by the statements of the solicitor general to reporters. “The President has made it very clear that the issues of  family in the decisions of  government should not play a part,” Cadiz said. A Palace spokesperson, who is not the most lucid and articulate in the babel of presidential mouthpieces, said, “The position of the President here is that he is after the good of the greater number of the farmer-beneficiaries, on what would be best. This is precisely the position that has been taken by the OSG and DAR.” This statement muddled what the President really meant, and didn’t help create public confidence that he favored the redistribution of land to the farm workers.

The solicitor general had a clearer idea of his task in seeking the reversal of the Court’s decision. He said that the law passed during the first Aquino administration mandated land distribution if the the stock distribution option (SDO) failed. He pointed out that the period for carrying out the stock option  had lapsed, noting that under the law if the arrangement was not realized within two years from its effectivity, the land should be subject to  compulsory distribution. “The law says that there is no need to  make a choice,” Cadiz said. “The law says that the land should be distributed if the SDO fails. The law is clear.”

The President faces a dilemma over his having divested himself of the interests of his own branch of the Cojuangco family under the shadow of his mother’s  questionable commitment to agrarian reform. After having been proclaimed president by popular acclamation following the overthrow of  the Marcos dictatorship in the 1986 People Power Revolution, President Cory Aquino promised to promote social justice and lift the poor from poverty. Two years after she took office, she promulgated the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), but watered it down by working into the law corporate sharing schemes for large estates.

In a referendum conducted in the 6,500-hectare Hacienda Luisita in 1989, about 90 percent of the 6,000 estate workers voted for the SDO. But the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council (PARC) later said that the SDO failed to improve the lives of the plantation workers. Disgruntlement broke out over the SDO in 2003, when groups of farmers demanded that it be rescinded, claiming that the scheme did not improve their lives. After a strike in which seven workers were killed and several wounded, the DAR revoked the stock arrangement, which the  PARC upheld in 2005.  Last week, the Supreme Court voted 6-4 to uphold the DAR’s revocation of the SDO and called for another referendum, saying it  could not “turn a blind eye” to the wish of the workers expressed in their 1989 vote.

The Court’s decision not only sent back to square one an issue that had been settled more than a decade ago, but also  stirred up social  turmoil in the agrarian reform sector. It divided the Court deeply, eliciting a warning from Chief Justice Renato Corona, who in a dissenting opinion warned against  the “eruption of a social volcano.” In one of his more memorable pronouncements since he was pointed chief justice by former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, Corona said that “Hacienda Luisita has always  been viewed as a litmus test of genuine agrarian reform.” He added:

“Our action here today  is not simply about Hacienda Luisita or a particular stock distribution plan. Our recognition of the right under the Constitution of those who till the land to steward it is the Court’s marching order to dismantle the feudal tenurial relations that for centuries have shackled them to  the soil in exchange for a pitiful share in the fruits, and install them as the direct or collective masters of the domain of their labor.

“It is not legal or moral to replace their shackles with stock certificates or any other superficial alternative. History will be the unforgiving judge of this Court. We cannot correct a historical anomaly and prevent the eruption of a social volcano by fancy legal arguments and impressively crafted devices for corporate control.”

The state lawyers have received the orders to appeal the decision. It remains to be seen if there’s a political will behind the orders.