Peping says

PEPING SAYS: On Hacienda Luisita, Postscript has received an email from businessman Jose “Peping” Cojuangco saying:

“Whenever I can, I follow your column which I find to be one of the fair commentaries currently in the media. I write you to clarify certain facts about Hacienda Luisita.

“I particularly appreciate your insight in saying that ‘either way the poll goes, the results will not necessarily produce a better deal for the farmers — unless both the government and the Cojuangco-Aquino clan put in place a program infused with the true spirit of agrarian reform.’

“It was precisely this concern for the farmers that the stockholder program was proposed by the HL, and was accepted by the farmers in two successive, previous referenda. Allow me to qualify your assertion that they were management-sponsored surveys — one was conducted by the Department of Agrarian Reform with volunteers from the University of the Philippines supervising the polls.

“A little-known fact is that at about the time Hacienda Luisita/Tabacalera was purchased by the Cojuangco family, it had subjected more than 6,000 hectares of its original 12,000-hectare holdings to farmers under the Land Tenure Act during President Magsaysay’s administration. Tragically, most of these farms no longer belong to the original recipients, because, as you acknowledge, of the absence of a sustainable support system for the small farmers unversed in managing and marketing.

“Another seldom-mentioned element in this issue is that HLI voluntarily endowed all the Luisita recipient workers of their shares for free, instead of charging them for the farms. Each family also received, again at absolutely no charge, individual 240 square-meter home lots that most of them still retain for their families, to this very day.

“The problems that have been cast at Hacienda Luisita have clearly been instigated in time with the terms of President Cory and President Noy Aquino. The Cojuangco family has never, ever been against Land Reform. I think you would be hard pressed to disagree that had Luisita been parceled out previously, most of the distributed plots would today have been sold and resold, with the recipients if not unemployed, then most likely drastically worse off than their present situations. The leftist cult Bayan has been externally inflaming trouble at Luisita, including the fatal strike that featured 118 arrested for criminal acts leading to injuries and deaths. Of these, only eight were Luisita workers, the rest were ‘imports,’ paid for the sole purpose of committing criminal unrest.

“Among the current aspersions still being cast at Luisita is the misleading insinuation that it was originally purchased with ‘inappropriate’ loan guarantees by the Central Bank. The guarantee, in truth, pertained only to assurances to the foreign banks that foreign currency would not be withheld from Luisita in fulfilling its obligations. Luisita was paid entirely with private funds without any financial dole from the government. It is unfortunate that the issues continue to be obfuscated by the self-serving motives of third parties who do not have the true interests of the farmers at heart.

“Mr. Pascual, I assure you that I speak for all in the Cojuangco family that we embrace your wisdom in proposing that it is time to “cut through the legalistic and bureaucratic jungle and marshal government resources to transform Luisita tenants* — whether new landowners or stockholders — into a new breed of Filipino farmers enjoying his enlightened brand of agrarian reform.’ (I note: * Luisita has no tenants, but farm workers who are all members of a labor union).