Bishop: SC ruling to continue injustice to Luisita farmers

A Catholic bishop known for advocating land reform has added his voice to the opposition to the Supreme Court's recent decision on the Hacienda Luisita land dispute. The Supreme Court has revoked the Hacienda Luisita Inc.'s stock distribution plan (SDP), which allowed for a stock distribution option (SDO) agreement in 1989. Under the deal, farmers were given the option to receive land or HLI shares of stock. The SC, however, said that despite the revocation of the SDP, the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) should administer a new referendum where qualified Hacienda Luisita farmers can vote if they want to receive land or if they want to remain HLI stockholders. Speaking at a press conference on Friday, Manila auxiliary bishop Broderick Pabillo said the high tribunal's decision will only aggravate the social injustice committed to the hacienda's farmers. "We strongly reject the Supreme Court-ordered referendum that can only continue the grave historical injustice committed against the farmers," said Pabillo, who heads the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines' National Secretariat for Social Action, Justice and Peace (CBCP-NASSA). He said that he is wary the farmers will again – as in the 1989 referendum – be coerced, threatened, and influenced into picking shares of stock over land because they are not adequately informed of the consequences of their vote. "Historically, referendums in Hacienda Luisita had always been to the disadvantage of the poor farmers. They are not in a position to freely choose because of their dire material needs and because of the threats and political manipulations of the occupying entity. By this decision, which is not a 'win-win' solution at all, [thus] the Supreme Court is now perceived as interpreting the laws not in favor of the poor farmers but of the landed rich people," he added. The SC, in its decision, gave an explanation for the conduct of a new referendum despite the revocation of HLI's stock distribution plan. "While the assailed PARC [Presidential Agrarian Reform Council] resolutions effectively nullifying the Hacienda Luisita SDP are upheld, the revocation must, by application of the operative fact principle, give way to the right of the original 6,296 qualified FWBs [farm worker beneficiaries] to choose whether they want to remain as HLI stockholders or not. The Court cannot turn a blind eye to the fact that in 1989, 93% of the FWBs agreed to the SDOA, which became the basis of the SDP approved by PARC," the high court said. CARPER Pabillo read his statement during the press conference held by the group dubbed the CARPER for Hacienda Luisita Movement. CARPER stands for the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program with Extensions and Revisions, which was signed into law in August 2009. The HLI was created by the Cojuangcos, the family of President Benigno Aquino III, as a result of the SDO clause that was inserted in the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law (CARL) during the term of Aquino’s mother, the late former President Corazon Aquino. The SDO clause can be found in Section 31 of the CARL, or Republic Act No. 6657. CARPER, the new land reform law, does not allow any stock distribution option for farmers. Group challenges SC decision's legal basis On Friday, other conveners of the CARPER for Hacienda Luisita Movement also questioned the legal basis of the SC's order to have the DAR facilitate a new referendum. Akbayan party-list Rep. Arlene Bag-Ao said that with the revocation of the SDP in Hacienda Luisita, the consequence is that any stock distribution scheme should no longer exist. "The Supreme Court..., under the cloak of the principle called 'operative fact', justified the continued existence of the SDP after having declared it to be void. This is borne by the directive of the Supreme Court to allow the farmers the option to remain as stockholders of HLI," said Bag-Ao's legal notes whose copies were distributed to the media. "This pronouncement of the SC finds no basis in fact and in law and confuses the public," she added. She then said that SC is essentially allowing the farmers to choose a "legally baseless agreement." The party-list representative then echoed Supreme Court associate justice Maria Lourdes Sereno, who said in her dissenting opinion that the conduct of a new referendum is legally baseless because any stock distribution option agreement can only be valid with the approval of the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council (PARC). But in this case, there is no PARC approval because the high court upheld the PARC's revocation of the SDP. "There is not a single legal twig on which the order to proceed with the voting option can hang, except the will of this Court's majority," Sereno said in her dissenting opinion. — LBG, GMA News