Corona vows to resolve Luisita issue under his watch

Chief Justice Renato Corona on Wednesday vowed that the case of the distribution of the Cojuangco-owned Hacienda Luisita sugar plantation to farm workers — a contentious issue linked to President Benigno Aquino III — will be resolved under his watch. Corona said he has already ordered the magistrate assigned to write the decision to “speed up" the case. “We will attend to it. In fact, I have been in touch with the ponente and prodded him to speed up the study of the case," he said in an interview after attending a Red Mass held at the Manila Cathedral. “The ponente is not yet ready with any decision so it has not yet been calendared or put on the agenda for discussion," he added.

The 6,453-hectare plantation was placed under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program's (CARP) stock distribution option (SDO) scheme in 1988, or during the term of Aquino’s mother, the late President Corazon “Cory" Aquino. Through this scheme, farmers were able to own 33 percent of Luisita's shares of stocks while the rest are still controlled by HLI, whose incorporators are relatives of Aquino. In 2005, the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) and the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council (PARC) canceled the SDO, which means the lands would be placed under the compulsory coverage or mandated land acquisition scheme of the CARP. However, the HLI managed to secure a temporary restraining order from the Supreme Court in 2006, preventing the DAR and PARC from carrying out their ruling. Farm workers from Hacienda Luisita asked the Supreme Court last year to lift the TRO, saying that the high court “is legally, morally and politically mandated to carry out the cause for agrarian justice and social emancipation." The case is currently being handled by the high court’s First Division chaired by Corona himself. Aquino, during his campaign for the presidency, promised to ensure the distribution of Hacienda Luisita land to farmer-beneficiaries before June 2014, the expiration of CARP extension law, after all the plantation's debts are paid so that farmers would not be burdened financially. - KBK, GMANews.TV