On the anniversary of CARP "Hacienda Luisita is a 6,435-hectare sugar plantation estate in Tarlac. It is today owned and operated by the Cojuangco-Aquinos, a powerful political clan with business interests spanning everything from basic utilities to real estate. The land was never theirs to begin with, and was leased to the Cojuangcos by the Philippine Central Bank, on the back of a questionable deal made in the 1980s, on the clear condition that the land would eventually be turned over to small farmers who have tilled it for generations. This never happened. Five presidents later, the same farmers have received neither land nor compensation apart from slave wages, sophisticated legal maneuvering and bogus land distribution programmes at the behest of the President’s relatives. In 2005, the Department of Agrarian Reform issued a new resolution, calling for full land redistribution and scrapping the “stock distribution option” altogether, which it declared illegal according to agreements made in 1989. The farmers called for nothing less than complete control over their lands – not stocks – in a series of oral arguments at the Supreme Court in 2010. Two years later, in response to mass public protests, the court reached a final decision in April 2012: total land distribution. It also ordered the Cojuangcos to pay the farmers their long-overdue compensation, amounting to some 1.33 billion pesos from illegal sales of estate properties by Hacienda Luisita, Inc. The farmers have, to date, received little of what was promised, with the bulk of nominal land distributions made through Carper going instead to ‘beneficiaries’ not on the original redistribution lists – or to individuals closely linked with the Cojuangcos: personal friends, drivers, household help and staff..." cynicmeetshope.wordpress/2013/04/16/hacienda-luisita-luha-lupa-at-karit/ youtube/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5f6kQaJRY2w
Posted on: Thu, 06 Jun 2013 05:54:21 +0000
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