Saturday, 30 October 2010
By James Konstantin Galvez, Reporter
Church-led groups supporting farm workers on strike at Hacienda Luisita on Friday lashed at a reported plan of Hacienda Luisita Inc. (HLI) management to enter into a joint venture with China’s top beverage maker Hangzhou Wahaha Group Co. Ltd. for a P1-billion sugar plantation venture in the Philippines.
In a statement, the Luisita Peasants and People’s Alliance (LUPPA) described the planned deal between the sugar plantation owned by the family of President Benigno Aquino 3rd and Wahaha Group as “illegal, immoral and grossly detestable.”
LUPPA is a newly formed group composed of church people, members of the academe, party-list representatives, politicians, professional sectors, artist groups and leaders of the farm workers in Hacienda Luisita.
Its coordinator, Edna Velarde, said that the management of HLI is acting as if it is higher and more powerful than the Supreme Court—where mediations over the issue of the Stock Distribution Option (SDO) agreement with farmer-beneficiaries are still ongoing.
“The HLI management is acting like a national mafia with the consent and seal of approval of the Office of the President and of course [President Aquino]. This is unfair, bizzare and blatantly illegal and patently diabolical,” Velarde added.
“My God, the Luisita case is still pending before the Supreme Court and the Cojuangco-Aquino clan had been convicted by public opinion for denying the rights of over 10,000 farm worker beneficiaries because of their all-time greed. The Cojuangcos are even violating their own reactionary laws and rules for the sake of their feudal reign in Luisita. The President and his family are really horrible people,” she added.
The President is a Cojuangco on the side of his mother, late former President Corazon Cojuangco-Aquino.
Earlier, HLI spokesman and lawyer Tony Ligon said that the management will wait for the High Court decision on the SDO agreement with legitimate farmer beneficiaries of the 6,400-hectare Hacienda Luisita in Tarlac province north of Manila before resuming talks with Wahaha Group.
Ligon added that the company’s board of directors has not decided on the planned joint venture, saying that it was not even mentioned during the company’s monthly stockholders meeting.
He denied rumors that they were just “acting on formalities” and that HLI and Wahaha had signed the joint venture agreement for a sugar plantation project.
But Velarde cautioned the HLI management that the sugar estate is still locked in a long-running legal dispute before the Supreme Court, and that HLI was defeated in the first round of the legal battle.
The LUPPA coordinator was referring to the collapse of a compromise deal and a referendum initiated by HLI management on the continuation of the SDO in the sugar estate and the failure of mediation committee established by the High Court to convince the farm workers to agree to the SDO.
Under the SDO, farmers get shares of stocks of an agribusiness company owning Hacienda Luisita instead of lands as stipulated in the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program.
In preparation for the looming battle against the HLI-Chinese firm deal, Velarde said that LUPPA will hold its public launching on Saturday at the De La Salle College of St. Benilde where the alliance expects to mobilize at least 100 persons from various church and university-based groups and institutions.
“We will discuss how we could provide legal, political and moral help to Luisita farm workers regarding this newest invasion of a Chinese softdrink giant inside the hacienda, courtesy of the President and the ruling feudal aristocracy in Hacienda Luisita,” her group said.
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