COJUANGCO PHANTOMS HUNT THE PRESIDENCY

The Cojuangco owned Hacienda Luisita in Tarlac costs more than a huge sum of money. It actually bartered poor farmers’ lives and a truckload of “elitist” injustice. The 6,400 hectare land that the Cojuangco’s hold on to with fangs and claws simply represent the adversity of servitude and the rich’s monopoly of influence. And this unlikely Juan dela Cruz tragic drama will persist just as another Cojuangco heir is eyeing the presidency.

No one is absolutely clean of partisanship and misuse of authority in the Philippine political arena. Unfortunately, the long list of presidents we have had to deal with their own horrors and Achilles’ heel. For one, Martial law had nailed former Pres. Ferdinand Marcos’ administration despite the grandness of the Philippine economy in the 1970s. His dictatorship and iron-fist rule lingered more on Filipinos’ consciousness other than his build-up fiscal progress. Most say, Juan preferred the “doughnut hole” other than Marcos’ offered “progress”. On the other hand, the phantoms of Hacienda Luisita haunted Pres. Corazon Aquino’s rise to power. The heroine of EDSA-1 have had her fair share of public’s disfavor when the celebrated government case against the despotic “landlordship” of the Cojuangco’s took a dubious turn in favor of the then Pres. Aquino’s kin.

In an interview of Former MAR or Ministry of Agrarian Reform (now Department of Agrarian Reform) official, Jose Santos in the alternative paper-Bulatlat, he affirmed that Don Jose Cojuangco’s deal with the government about half a decade ago binds the “azucarera” to a supposedly irrevocable deal among its tenants. In particular, the GSIS approved 5.9 million peso loan of Don Jose that was used to purchase Hacienda Luisita incorporated a condition that the estate would then be subdivided among its tenants. Around 4,000 hectares should have been legally apportioned to the Luisita’s farmers. But just as the MAR’s case take a winning toll against the Cojuangco’s, Pres. Cory ascended in Malacañang and actually had a revamp of MAR officials to include the appointment of Sedfrey Ordoñez as Solicitor General. Ordoñez served as the Cojuangco’s legal counsel in the controversial Hacienda Luisita legal thug. And as expected, when he assumed into MAR (DAR) the winnable case of the government against the Cojuangco’s littered.

Most admires Pres. Aquino’s descent to power. The widow of another Martial Law hero- Sen. Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino was elemental in putting an end to the 20-year totalitarian rule of Marcos. Sad to say, the victory of EDSA People Power was boxed on the Pres. Cory and that this was further exploited by the Cojuangco to undermine the biddings of the law. The creation of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program or (CARP) was the ironic tool used by the Cojuangco’s to trash out Luisita farmer’s rights. This is one cruel truth of “omnipotent power” manhandling the weak but paid much interest.

And just as CARP faces its end after a twin decade of prostituting the poor Luisita tenants’ rights, another Cojuangco claims the presidential throne. Expectedly, another injustice is cooked-up. Maybe, a resurrected CARP would again haunt the victims of Luisita. And if I may say, we are partly to blame for the discrete crimes of Cojuangcos.