‘Land ho!’
Or is it ‘Land no?’

THE RECENT Supreme Court decision on the highly controversial Hacienda Luisita case could pave the way to the long-delayed distribution of other agricultural estates among tillers, but experts are pointing out that a long and arduous process lies ahead for both the government and farmer-beneficiaries at Luisita and elsewhere.

Speaking at a press conference organized by agrarian reform advocates last Monday – a day before the Supreme Court released what many are now calling a landmark decision – former University of the Philippines School of Labor and Industrial Relations (SOLAIR) dean Rene E. Ofreneo said that in Hacienda Luisita alone, the difficulty of identifying the legal successors of those dead farmer beneficiaries and addressing the system of arriendo are just among the many hurdles that the government could face in implementing the Court’s decision.

The arriendo, a system where local government officials and former managers and supervisors of Hacienda Luisita, Inc. (HLI) leased tracts of land from farmers at a rate of P10,000 per hectare each year, was adopted there in 2004. Most of the pieces of land are leased until 2015, noted Ofreneo.

He also said that for agrarian reform to be successful the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) must work closely with the farmers to provide support services and agricultural credit assistance.

Indeed, since the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) was implemented in 1988, DAR has always fallen short of its targets of hectares of lands to be distributed to farmer-beneficiaries.

The department’s own data show that from 1987 to 2010, it managed to distribute only a total 4,741,782 hectares out of the original 7,397,318. As of February 2012, DAR reported to have distributed only 113,196 hectares out of the intended 200,000 hectares for 2011.

CARP was intended to redistribute sprawling agricultural estates, regardless of crops or fruits produced, among landless tillers. But it immediately met resistance from many of the families who owned these estates, most of whom had held the properties for generations.

In many cases, measures that were already considered as favoring landowners were seemingly twisted some more and put the tillers at a greater disadvantage.

Among these was the Stock Distribution Scheme (SDO), where farmers and landowners both become stockholders of a corporation governing the estate. This let a property escape being subdivided among the tillers for distribution. In return, the farmers would receive a just share of the fruits of the land they till. In addition, the law orders that the farmers’ assets in the corporation should be composed of the majority, or more than 50 percent of the total assets, to protect their interests.

In the case of HLI, however, the farmers’ assets were composed of 33.296 percent only, while the Cojuangco clan – which counts President Benigno Simeon C. Aquino III among its members – owned 66.704 percent.

But CARP seems to have finally caught up with the Cojuangcos. In an en banc session in Baguio City, the Supreme Court affirmed its November 22, 2011 ruling to distribute the 4,335-hectare Hacienda Luisita, a sugar plantation in Tarlac province, to the 6,296 qualified farmers.

The Court dismissed HLI’s December 2011 appeal to reverse an earlier ruling that “recalled and set aside” the option for farmers to remain stockholders of HLI.

The decision placed HLI under the “compulsory coverage on mandated land acquisition scheme of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP),” repudiating the SDO scheme.

In an 8-6 vote, the Court also denied another HLI appeal on just compensation.

HLI had argued that just compensation should be based at the time of the taking or at least at the issuance of notice of coverage by DAR in January 2006, pursuant to the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council (PARC) resolution in December 2005.

The Supreme Court decision means that the farmers would pay the Cojuangcos only P40, 000 per hectare or P173.4 million, which was based on the land’s value on Nov. 21, 1989 when the stock distribution plan was approved, instead of P1 million per hectare or P4.335 billion

The 1989 rate was just fair and which the farmers could afford, Christian Monsod, legal counsel of the farmers, said in the Monday press conference by agrarian reform advocates.

Monsod also said that they believed the Court would uphold the side of social justice – the farmer beneficiaries. But if social justice could be further invoked, Monsod commented, an additional compensation should be given to the farmers for the 24-year delay on giving the land to its due owners.

Policy and agrarian reform advocates Center for Research and Special Studies (CRSS) and Climate Change Congress of the Philippines (CCCP) meanwhile said in a press release that the Court’s recent decision could lead to the distribution of other disputed agricultural estates under the SDO scheme, particularly in the Visayas region.

For instance, two SDO cases pending at the PARC are the Hacienda Anita (owned by SVJ Farms) and the Hacienda Teresa (owned by 14 Colored Corporations). Both haciendas are located in Negros province.