SDO, root of all problems
08/20/2010
The exchange of arguments at the Supreme Court (SC) over the stock distribution option (SDO), the crux of the current conflict at the Hacienda Luisita of the Cojuangco-Aquino family of President Noynoy,
points to the fact that political influence kept the farmers out of their rightful claim on the sugar estate, which goes way beyond the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) of Cory Aquino, Noynoy’s mother, to the time when his father Sen. Ninoy Aquino brokered the sale of the hacienda with President Magsaysay and Ninoy’s Cojuangco in-laws.
Several administrations had tried to implement in vain the real intent of the sale of the land to the Cojuangcos, which was for the farmers to later own. It was always the intervention of an administration friendly to the Cojuangco-Aquinos that allowed the family to retain the estate.
High court justices yesterday entertained the argument that since Hacienda Luisita Inc. (HLI), the company formed by the Cojuangco-Aquinos to enforce the SDO scheme, had submitted the compromise agreement to the tribunal, the high court acquires jurisdiction on reviewing the SDO provision under the CARP that those who crafted the 1987 Constitution themselves said was a loophole in the intent of the law for land distribution.
Associate Justice Jose Perez says the submission of the compromise agreement opened the SDO provision in the CARP for scrutiny that would go way beyond the case filed by the HLI questioning the legality of the
Presidential Agrarian Reform Council (PARC)’s order in 2005 handed down by Gloria Arroyo invalidating the SDO scheme and ordering the immediate distribution of the HLI land to farm workers.
The SC taking up the validity of the SDO as a way to comply with the CARP will be the master stroke to end once and for all not only the long-drawn HLI conflict but also many similar cases in which the corporate farm scheme was exploited to deny farmers their right to own land.
The SDO was the sole exception in the CARP law and was tailor-made for the Aquino-Cojuangco’s Hacienda Luisita when the law was crafted during the administration of a president who happened to be one of the owners of the family estate.
The HLI uses the validity of the SDO as argument in claiming that the PARC does not have the authority to revoke it, thus limiting the deliberation to whether or not the PARC did act within its mandate.
The validity of the SDO and pointing out that this is “beyond question” as Justice Perez puts it, is also the same argument used by HLI in justifying the compromise agreement it struck with farm workers that sought to cleanse the hacienda of those clamoring for land distribution. The compromise deal included a P150-million package that appeared more than anything else as a bribe for farm workers to go along with the SDO scheme.
While it would take Congress to amend the law on CARP which is now CARPer or the CARP extension with reforms to take out the SDO scheme as an alternative way of compliance, the SC is vested with the authority to review its accordance with the Constitution or its consonance with the true spirit of the CARP law.
The justices might have found an opening to make the SDO a justiciable issue with the filing of the case questioning the compromise agreement and the HLI’s defense of the irreproachable SDO scheme.
It seems that the problem with the judicious implementation of the CARP as well as the decades-old conflict at Hacienda Luisita started with Cory in allowing an exception to the land distribution rule.
Noynoy now has the chance to end once and for all, the problems that had long bedeviled land reform.
All he has to do is be president and not an HLI owner.
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Re: New York Times stands by story on Hacienda Luisita
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