Category: land reform

ninoy’s LP would have welcomed satur & liza

i’m not crazy about manny villar but he scores pogi points (with me anyway) for welcoming leftist lawmakers satur ocampo and liza masa as senatorial candidates of the nacionalista party.   this, even if villar knows (i’m sure) that the NP wasn’t satur’s and liza’s first choice, or even second, more like a last resort, and only after much ideological soulsearching re the bongbong marcos connection.   read jojo robles’s Missing out on history, referring to, who else, the LP’s noynoy aquino.

The latest significant political event is the decision of leftist lawmakers Satur Ocampo and Liza Maza to go mainstream by joining an established party in their historic run for the Senate, after serving three terms in the House as party-list representatives. Of secondary importance is the decision of the Liberal Party of Noynoy Aquino not to take in the two, allegedly because of the demands made by various leftist groups to distribute the land on which the Aquino family’s Hacienda Luisita stands to the farmers who work its fields.

… Villar’s NP was not the only party that was in talks to include Ocampo and Maza in their Senate lineups. Both Chiz Escudero’s Nationalist People’s Coalition (whom Ocampo and Maza supported early on) and the LP (when Mar Roxas was still its standard-bearer) had also wanted the two to become part of their own slates.

When they filed their certificates of candidacy, in fact, both Ocampo and Maza indicated their party affiliation as “independent.” Both said at the time that they were still undecided about which party to join, and that they were still in talks with leaders of these mainstream political groups regarding the compatibility of their respective platforms and other issues.

Of course, the virtual breakup of the NPC ticket with the withdrawal of Escudero from the presidential race and his resignation from the party (plus the decision of Loren Legarda to run as Villar’s running mate) effectively ended talks between the two prominent leftists and the coalition founded by tycoon Eduardo “Danding” Cojuangco. Villar and his group eventually filed their certificates, but left two slots vacant for Ocampo and Maza.

As for the two leftists’ plans of joining the LP ticket, that was decided during a meeting last month in Makati between them and party leaders Aquino, Franklin Drilon and Florencio Abad, among others. During that meeting, according to Ocampo, a “relaxed” Aquino declared his displeasure over the leftists’ efforts to have the land that his family owns distributed to the farmers there.

Over dinner, Aquino recalled a protest action staged several years ago by leftist groups who wanted the Luisita land given to the farmers outside the house of his mother, Cory.Noynoy apparently still harbored a grudge against the leftist organizations that have been blaming Mrs. Aquino for exempting her family’s plantation from her showcase land reform program and the death of militants during the Mendiola massacre outside Malacañang early in her term and at the plantation itself.

In a media forum shortly after the meeting, Ocampo recounted that he advised Aquino not to take the Luisita issue personally, since it had been festering even before he was born. However, Ocampo stressed that if Noynoy Aquino also became president, he would have the obligation to resolve the problems at the hacienda, which was “corporatized” through a stock distribution program instead of being divided among its tenant-farmers.

* * *

Ocampo, however, said that the Cojuangco family plantation was not the only stumbling block to their entry into the LP senatorial slate. They also noticed that Aquino and the other LP leaders did not seem too interested in taking in them in, allegedly because of the vast number of candidates who wanted to join Noynoy’s slate and the fact that decision of who gets in or not was not solely the standard-bearer’s to make.

“[Aquino] was silent about whether we would be included among those they would consider. There was nothing categorical like that. There was no statement that we could be considered,” Ocampo told reporters at the Serye forum. Instead, according to Ocampo, what they were told was that the applicants for the remaining slots in the slate were already too numerous as it was.

“They said there were many falling in line, more than double the number of slots, and there were special groups lobbying to be accommodated,” Ocampo recalled. Apparently, the LP had already found its “token leftist” in Rep. Risa Hontiveros of Akbayan, another party-list group that has broken away with Ocampo’s Bayan Muna, Maza’s Gabriela and the other left-leaning organizations that have gone “aboveground” in the House.

… Yesterday, in announcing the first-ever endorsement by the country’s major leftist groups of a presidential and vice-presidential tandem, Ocampo called the partnership a “mutual adoption” of platforms. Makabayan, he said, wil adopt the NP’s platform while the NP also agrees to accept Makabayan’s program of government.

… Of course, this is not really the first time that left-leaning organizations have attempted to barge into the elitist old boys’ club that the Senate is sometimes known to be since the ouster of Marcos. In the 1987 senatorial elections, the Left fielded an entire Senate ticket under the Partido ng Bayan coalition, but none of its candidates won.

What’s significant is that the Left is now attempting to win in the Senate through a “traditional” party like the NP, after shopping around for suitable groups among the current opposition field. This time around, after their long experience of harnessing the party-list system, the leftists seem to believe that they’re finally ready for political prime time.

It’s unfortunate that Noynoy Aquino and his traditionally bourgeois collection of yellow-clad supporters may have missed out on this major political development. And to think that he’s supposed to be the candidate who’s hell-bent on changing the status quo.

and, really, this antipathy towards the left is soooo NOT ninoy.   read The Filipino as Dissident from ninoy’s Testament from a Prison Cell.   is noynoy in denial about ninoy’s connection with joma sison and ka dante?   if ninoy were alive he wouldn’t think twice about having satur and liza run for the senate as LPs.   RAs and RJs welcome.   mar roxas, before he slid down, was on the right track.

noynoy, etta, luisita

read this open letter by akbayan’s etta rosales to for senator benigno aquino 3rd in the manila times today but can’t find it in the online edition.   googled it instead and found  ellen tordesillas‘ blog post.

Dear Noynoy,

I write you as friend and former colleague in Congress re Hacienda Luisita, an issue that involves not just your family and the farmers of Tarlac but, of larger import, the issue of land and the crisis of food production threatened by climate change. I make this an open letter to include in our conversation the people who have clamored for you to run for president.

November 16 marks the day when seven farmers of Tarlac were killed initially and scores injuredby security forces that attacked protesting farmers pressing to open the gates of the Hacienda. It is therefore no surprise that the issue has surfaced in a broadsheet and will continue to be the subject of media reports to get your position on the matter.

The following points may be helpful for us to consider.

We are all committed to seeking a peaceful and just solution to the issue of Hacienda Luisita farmers. This is in line with the spirit of social justicedefined by international law on human rights, the 1987 Charter and tenets of the newly passed CARPER law (although some of its provisions remain controversial, as they represent views from recalcitrant landed interests).

Perhaps we can address specific issues on the ground and resolve them from a rights-based perspective, the underpinnings of governance that ensures government for all and not just for a few.

One, while you may not have been aware, it is true that Hacienda Luisita Inc. issued a letter stating that all occupants must vacate the land end-October. This triggered strong emotions from farmers who had occupied the land as a matter of survival, which occupation followed the paralysis of organized production with the tragic killings of November 16 and shortly after (a total of fourteen farm workers were killed).

Two, it is equally true that some of the occupying farm workers did rent out the land they occupiedto those who were financially capable of using the land for crops they wanted to plant. It must have been a matter of survival – they had nothing to eat, they had zero income, they had no capital for production. Renting out was a way of making both ends meet while the land reform question remains pending. One can readily conclude that it mattered less to the farmers that the renters were insiders or outsiders, farm workers or not. To provide food and shelter for the family was paramount.

Three, the issue of Stock Distribution Option (SDO) as an agrarian reform scheme precedes CARPER; it was in Section 31 of the original CARP. We now have to deal with the new law.

Four, SDO likewise preceded your run for the presidency; you inherited a problem that needs to be resolved peacefully but with dispatch for the common good. This is especially urgent in the light of the emerging food crisis where climate change has affected not just Philippine rice fields but also fields from Vietnam and Taiwan, traditional sources of imported rice.

Five, when farmers lack capital to produce crops, they will not hesitate to reach out to outsiders to rent their lands. Sending notices to the farmers to rid them of non-SDO members does not alleviate the hardship. It merely exposes the problem of the dearth of capital and support services.

Six, the only guarantee that support services can be provided the farm workers is after the land has been fully and completely awarded to them by the DAR. And this is at least a possibility under the CARPER framework.

Seven, AKBAYAN is committed to the call for land redistribution in Hacienda Luisita and we hope that our current alliance with the Liberal Party will hasten and facilitate the enforcement of this call. We look forward to a meaningful and long-term solution to Hacienda Luisita anchored on social justice, human rights and an ecology-based system for sustainable development.

Your friend as always,

Etta P. Rosales
AKBAYAN Chair Emeritus