SC creates committee to mediate on Luisita

MANILA, Philippines—The Supreme Court Tuesday created a special committee that will try to mediate the two-decade land dispute between Hacienda Luisita Inc. (HLI) owned by the family of President Aquino and the farmer beneficiaries.

“We are creating a special committee to try to resort to mediation,” said Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato Corona as he ended the oral arguments on the petition of the HLI to nullify the government’s revocation of its stock distribution option agreement (SDOA) with the farmer-beneficiaries and ordered the corporation to distribute land to its tillers.

Corona also said that as the high court wants to “decide this case as soon as we can,” he ordered a non-extendable 30-day simultaneous filing of memoranda “without prejudice to that avenue of mediation.”

The farmers’ lawyers are amenable to the mediation but stressing that the stock distribution option would not be part of any talks.

“We are willing to think of mediation but not within the framework of the SDO… We will not be railroaded into an agreement… The farmers must get the land,” said lawyer Christian Monsod, counsel for 27 farmer-beneficiaries calling themselves Farm Peace Foundation Inc.

Monsod also stressed that the compromise agreement earlier reached by HLI and other farmer-beneficiaries would not be part of the talks with the Luisita corporation.

Lawyer Jobert Pahilga, who represented a faction of the Alyansa ng mga Manggagawang Bukid ng Hacienda Luisita (Ambala) also said that any talks with the HLI will not include the stock distribution option.

Solicitor General Jose Anselmo Cadiz also agreed to the mediation, saying that the Supreme Court always “encourages settlements among parties.”

Tuesday’s oral arguments lasted five-and-a-half hours as Cadiz and the farmers’ lawyers, who were supporting the PARC’s revocation of the SDOA, were grilled by the justices.

It was Supreme Court Associate Justice Presbitero Velasco who raised the possibility of mediation as a way to achieve a “happy compromise” between the farmers and HLI.

Velasco said the situation has become complicated that if there will be land distribution, establishments such as malls and banks will be affected.

“Other firms that established businesses in the area may be affected by the land distribution,” Velasco said.

Lawyer Carmelito Santoyo, also a counsel of Ambala, said they are amenable to a mediation “as long as the farmers are amenable to it.” –Nikko Dizon, Philippine Daily Inquirer with a report from Tetch Torres, INQUIRER.net