THE Unyon ng mga Manggagawa sa Agrikultura (UMA) has described the Department of Agrarian Reform’s (DAR) planned distribution of land in Hacienda Luisita by June, 2013 a sham.
At the same time, what the DAR would really want and through the dictates of the President is to preserve the Cojuangco and Aquino clans’ control of the land by distributing the land through the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program Extension with Reforms (CARPER) and encouraging diversified sugar block farming in the plantation.
Other than bloating the master list of agricultural worker beneficiaries (AWBs) by almost a thousand, the DAR had sabotaged in May 17, 2013 the process for the planned auditing of the P1.33B share of the AWB’s in the sale of 580 hectares of land by Hacienda Luisita Inc. (HLI).
The DAR denied the motion of all the parties that attended the activity to award the auditing right to Ocampo, Mendoza, Leung, Lim & Co. (OMLL) and to disqualify KPMG and Reyes Tacandong & Co. for being close to HLI and other Cojuangco owned firms.
DAR’s main contention in denying the motions of all the parties concerned is that the Supreme Court (SC) ruled that all parties should approve the selection of the auditing firm. This would be impossible to achieve if DAR insists that HLI is a party to the selection process even if it is the entity that would be audited. Most probably this would be elevated to the SC as DAR suggested.
In effect there would be no need for DAR to solicit the assistance of different government agencies in soliciting support services for the agricultural workers, because the 1.33 billion (P214 thousand if given individually) that HLI owes them is more than enough to be used as capital for agricultural production.
At the same time, the DAR had already announced several times that what they would distribute would be less than what the Supreme Court ordered them which was 4,335 hectare agricultural lands excluding the 580 hectares sold to RCBC and SCTEX. In fact, there is a pending motion to revoke the conversion order of the 500 hectares of land of RCBC and include this in the land to be distributed to the farmers. However, the DAR has up to now, ignored said motion.
In addition to this, distributing the land based on CARPER would essentially preserve the Cojuangco and Aquino clans’ control of the land. In CARPER, the beneficiaries would need to pay an amortization for 30 years and failure to do so in 3 consecutive years would result in cancellation to own the land. At the same time, the landlords would need to be compensated by the State based on the landlords’ sole valuation of the land.
At the moment, the DAR has not yet announced how much the valuation of the land is. If this is less than what the landlords want, they can appeal this to a Special Agrarian Court then up to the Supreme Court. But Hacienda Luisita’s landlords should not be compensated nor should the farmers pay any amortization for it.
But more than this, the land should be given back to the farmer beneficiaries based on historical records that prove that these should have been given back to them since 1967.
And by encouraging diversified sugar block farming in the plantation, the DAR wants to discourage the farmers to plant any other crops as this would allegedly not be profitable to them as the land to be distributed is less than a hectare for each beneficiary. The farmers would be tied to such kind of production and this would ensure the continued profitability of the Central Azucarera de Tarlac (CAT), the sugar central owned by the Cojuangco’s and Aquino’s, who can dictate the price of sugar to be milled.
Finally, DAR’s plan to form so-called appropriate farmers’ organizations that may serve as conduits for support services is an attempt to divide the ranks of the farmers in the Hacienda by paving the way for the entry of pseudo-leaders. There are already existing organizations in the area and the biggest are Alyansa ng mga Manggagawa sa Asyenda Luisita (AMBALA) and United Luisita Workers Union (ULWU) and there is no need for DAR to set up new ones.
The UMA is thus encouraging agricultural worker beneficiaries to be vigilant in frustrating DAR’s sham land distribution in Hacienda Luisita. At the same time, it calls on them to expand the bungkalan and set-up work teams to ensure that they would not be dispossessed from the land while at the same time, indulging in productive agricultural work.