Rekindling hope for rural reform in the Philippines

Source: http://www.icco.nl

18 January 2012

  The recent 14-0 decision of the Supreme Court on November 22, 20110 that favoured the redistribution of Hacienda Luisita, came as a breath of fresh air that have inspired rural reform advocates in the Philippines. The decision capped decades of difficult, and often times bloody, struggle of farm workers to own the lands they till. As a result, hope for reform has been rekindled and demands for the land redistribution of the remaining 1.4 million hectares targeted under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program Extension with Reforms (CARPER) have been raised.

A colonial vestige of the Spanish hacienda system, Hacienda Luisita is a national symbol of feudal domination in a country teeming with poverty. It is thus an important arena of struggle for redistributive agrarian reform in the country. The owning family of former President Cory Aquino and now current president Noynoy Aquino acquired the big sugar estate in 1957 from its original Spanish owners through loans with condition that the land will be redistributed to the farmers ten years after the acquisition. The Cojuangcos, however, successfully evaded land redistribution. The controversial stock distribution option recently revoked by the Supreme Court was the latest scheme of the Cojuangco family to evade land redistribution which merely gave corporate stocks certificate as a form of compliance to agrarian reform. It has thus symbolized the “sacred cows” in the country – untouchable lands owned by the most powerful and influential families – through time.

The redistribution of the 4,915-hectare hacienda to its more than 6,000 farm workers has thus become a real opportunity with the recent decision of the SC. Luisita’s long standing symbol as a feudal enclave is turning around as a symbol of pro-poor social change.

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