PRESS RELEASE
CPP Information Bureau
10 August 2010

Hacienda Luisita "deal" pushing peasants to armed revolution --
CPP

The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) today condemned the
so-called compromise deal forged by the management of the Hacienda
Luisita Inc. (HLI), calling it "a devious scheme to preserve the
decades-old Cojuangco land monopoly in Tarlac and continue subjecting
the peasants and farm workers to perpetual semifeudal exploitation and
oppression."

"The so-called deal was deviously cooked up and is being vigorously
pushed by the Cojuangcos through bribery, coercion and political
maneuverings," said the CPP.

"By having one of their own in Malacañang, the Cojuangcos are now
brazenly pushing through with all possible arrangements, however
odious and malevolent, to protect their vast landholdings and preserve
their wealth accumulated through power, theft, malevolence and the
exploitation and oppression of their tenants and farm workers."

The CPP accused Benigno Aquino III of pretending to distance himself
from the issue. "It is obvious that Aquino has been totally in,
minutely following the issue, and strongly pushing for the phoney
deal," said the CPP.

"The hypocritical president is now also trying to win over the chief
justice, Renato Corona, whom Aquino earlier said he would not
recognize for being an illegal midnight appointee of the previous
president. He now wants to win his favor and that of the other
justices in the SC's forthcoming hearing on appeals of peasant
organizations to junk the spurious Stock Distribution Option (SDO) and
immediately distribute the Hacienda Luisita lands," the CPP added.

"The Cojuangco deal is the complete opposite of the long-standing
clamor for social justice," averred the CPP.

"By continuing to ignore the demand of the masses of peasants and
farm workers to subject Hacienda Luisita and all other monopoly-owned
haciendas to land reform, the Aquino regime only succeeds in exposing
the plain truth that breaking the feudal and semifeudal system in the
Philippines can only be achieved by waging agrarian revolution through
armed struggle," added the CPP. "The callous Cojuangco deal will only
push more and more peasants and farm workers to join the armed
revolution as the only means to achieve their long-standing demand for
social justice."
 

The SDO scheme was contained in an executive order of then president
Cory Aquino, issued even before the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform
Program (CARP) was made into law in 1988. The SDO scheme was
introduced by the Cojuangco clan itself to preempt the actual
application of land reform to large plantations such as their Hacienda
Luisita.

The new Cojuangco "compromise deal" which was made public over the
weekened purportedly gives peasants the option to choose between
retaining their company stocks under the SDO or receiving a much
reduced size of land. The HLI now "offers" for distribution only 1,366
hectares out of the remaining 4,915 hectares of agricultural land in
the hacienda.
 

The CARP requires all agricultural lands to be distributed, with only
five hectares to be retained by the landlord, and with the
beneficiaries also receiving a share of the income of those lands
already converted to other uses. More than 1,500 hectares also
originally claimed by the peasants and farm workers had already been
converted for industrial and commercial use during the years the
hacienda was covered by CARP.

The Cojuangcos, skirted the law, using the contested SDO provision.
They created a shadow corporation in the form of Hacienda Luisita
Incorporated to avoid including in the SDO all the land and other
assets of the original Central Azucarera de Tarlac, increasingly
converted parts of the hacienda for industrial and commercial use, and
gave only a nominal 30% share of HLI, purportedly to correspond with
the 'value' of the entire remaining agricultural land.

The CPP said further that, "With further convoluted logic, the
Cojuangcos are now only claiming that the peasants and farmworkers'
30% share of HLI stocks is equivalent to only 30% of the agricultural
land. The phoney deal would leave each peasant or farm worker opting
for land with a only a tenth of a hectare."

Reference:
Marco Valbuena
Media Officer
Cellphone Numbers: 09156596802 :: 09282242061
E-mail:cppmedia@gmail.com
--
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following websites:
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www.philippinerevolution.net

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