As soon as they heard the news they all jumped for joy, shouting and waving their arms in jubilation, as if they just collectively won the lotto jackpot. Not a few couldn’t help shedding tears — of joy, they would rush to explain to news reporters, who sought to interview them as soon as the ‘historic’ decision was announced.
The Corona Supreme Court, in an en banc session in Baguio City on 24 April 2012, unanimously affirmed its 24 November 2011 ruling that the 4,915 hectares of Hacienda Luisita be distributed to some 6,200 farmer-beneficiaries under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law (CARL).
It also ruled on the just compensation issue, with an 8-6 vote favouring the farmers. Instead of pegging the land valuation at 2006 rates (or at an estimated P5 billion), which was what the Cojuangco clan wanted, the Corona Supreme Court ruled that just compensation should be set at 1989 valuation rates, or at the time when farmers became ‘part-owners’ of the land under the stock distribution scheme implemented by the Cojuangcos. At 1989 land values each hectare would amount to about P40,000 per hectare, or a total of some P196 million.
The court’s decision was ‘final and executory’. No more appeals or any new motions to be entertained or reconsidered. No more reasons or legal impediments for the Executive, through the Department of Agrarian Reform, not to implement the ruling. No more ifs and buts. It is ‘execution’ time.
For the farmers of Hacienda Luisita, it is a huge victory indeed, albeit a bittersweet one. Many of them are already in their late 60s, 70s, and 80s. They have been waging their fight for half a century — more than half of their lives. Some have died already, due to old age and natural causes, while others were killed as a consequence of state violence aimed at ‘protecting’ not their rights, but those of the hacenderos.
In what is now known as the Hacienda Luisita massacre, seven farmers were killed on 16 November 2004 when government troops violently dispersed the protesting farmers at the hacienda. More than a hundred were injured, nearly a third of them from gunshot wounds. Another eight would be killed in the following month, all were known supporters of the farmers’ struggle for total land distribution at the hacienda. Among those killed in December was a farmer-leader who was about to testify at Senate and Congressional hearings on the trajectory of bullets that killed farmers in the massacre.
The Supreme Court’s final ruling on Hacienda Luisita occurs within, or intersects with, another intense political drama being played out by contending groups within the country’s political and economic elite — between the Noynoy Aquino-Cojuangco camp and the holdovers of the previous Macapagal-Arroyo regime. It would be folly to assume that the Corona Court has suddenly turned social justice crusader, just as it would be naive to think that the pursuit of social reforms and economic justice can now be hastened under a Noynoy Aquino presidency without persistent struggle by marginalised groups and social classes and ordinary citizens.
Sure, be gracious and thank Chief Justice Corona and his court for finally upholding the right of farmers to own their lands, long violated by generations of Cojuangcos and by past political and judicial regimes. But the credit must go to the farmers, who persisted for 50 long years and fought with blood, sweat, and tears, for this victory. Had they stopped or quit in their struggle for land distribution of Hacienda Luisita, they would not have been able to maximise the favourable political opportunities presented by the ongoing fierce political intramurals between contending factions of the country’s governing elite.
That particular hacienda has long played a historical role in the political infighting among the Philippines’ ruling elite. Then-president Ramon Magsaysay offered the Cojuangcos governmental loan support just so the hacienda would not fall in the hands of the Lopezes of Iloilo, who were then interested in acquiring it from the Spanish Lopez-owned Tabacalera. Benigno ‘Ninoy’ Aquino, married to Corazon Cojuangco, became the hacienda’s administrator. Ferdinand Marcos, during his reign, would try to seize it, through his land reform programme, from his arch-political enemy, Ninoy. And just as the Marcos government won the legal case for land distribution against the Cojuangco-Aquinos in December 1985, the first EDSA people power would intervene and once more secure the latter’s control of the hacienda through an extremely flawed agrarian reform programme under Corazon Aquino. The political fallout between EDSA Dos political allies Corazon Aquino and then-president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo would put the hacienda at the centre of infighting once more in 2005. The Department of Agrarian Reform under Macapagal-Arroyo revoked the stock distribution scheme (SDO) prevailing in the hacienda. In 24 November 2011, a week after Gloria and her spouse, Mike Arroyo, were prevented from leaving the country and were put on hospital arrest, the Corona Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling that ordered total land distribution to farmers of Hacienda Luisita. A week later, the chief justice was impeached by a Congress dominated by Noynoy Aquino allies. The impeachment is still ongoing. Meanwhile, the Corona court issued a final decision favouring the farmers in the Luisita case. What more is to be yielded, both beneficial and destructive, by the political saga of intense elite infighting is yet to be seen. In other words, abangan ang susunod na kabanata.
The benefits of the ongoing political intramurals among the country’s elite have been significant. For farmers of Hacienda Luisita, their right to own the land they have been tilling for decades is finally recognised. For Filipinos, their right to make Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo accountable for her crimes against the nation is now being pursued.
But the damages, too, are not inconsequential — to the country’s fragile democratic institutions, to the rule of law, and the country’s governance in the face of pressing economic and social challenges. While Gloria, indeed, had been a scourge during her nine-year political reign, her self-interested political moves currently serve to foil similar moves by her now arch-political enemy. It is Philippine elite democracy at its finest, or at its worst, depending on where you’re at and how you look at it.
Ordinary citizens and progressive activists must strive to remain politically astute, critical in their thinking, and see the lie of the political landscape for what it is. While factions of the governing elite are busy at each other’s throats, citizens must be vigilant and be on the lookout for the right political opportunities that are bound to emerge and that could be seized in order to advance genuine social reforms and a truly popular, not just elite, democracy in this country.
