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.

SOMA: Suppose Our Media Agrees with GLORIA

Nothing could go wrong when one thinks outside the box and tries settling its own evasive affairs, like how the media make use of exploring controversies in order to make money. The negative write-ups on the current administration are hypothetically thrice the magnitude of Gloria’s claimed fandom in her ascendancy through Edsa Dos in 2001. Her administration who gagged-down a multi-million plunderer out of Malacañang is now being held at question by the very forces of the convicted-president Erap Estrada. It is bothersome how the public welcomes Erap who was neither regretful of his erring actions in 2000 nor conciliatory with the very administration that pardoned him for good. Thanks to what we could attest as “media-led distortion of accepted morals”, Erap is now our hero and Gloria, our devious archenemy.

The graft charges on GLORIA never hold ground. They were either lacking substance or worst politically motivated basing on the actions of its renowned whistleblowers who by now are testing the political waters for the nearing 2010. Compared with Erap, his plunder charges were proven factual and thereby contemptuous. During his term, the peso reached its intolerable dollar exchanges while oil prices skyrocketed. In fact, it was in Estradas’ term when peso struck its lowest buying ability in the international market. An open offensive with both the secessionist and Communist groups in the country also took a spin in the country’s stability and even destabilize the state’s budget. Erap was a sham president that People Power ousted from the presidency.

But with the kind of media ass-kissing Erap is getting, his supposed “negative pull” to the masses decreased in unexplainable heights. This same media mileage and even “grooming” led him to believe that Juan dela Cruz are naïve and stupid enough to welcome him in the presidential seat by 2010. The plunderer Erap was even remolded into a tempting delicacy for the 2010 elections; which is why, bunch of his enemies before side with him now. Like for example, the rightist moralists led by Bayan Muna Teddy Casiño and Satur Ocampo who spearheaded the Erap Resign Movement in 2001. In April of this year, both Casiño and Ocampo declared an open-alliance with the Estradas and his comrades in the political Opposition. This, by far, should have been a well-celebrated case of politicking at its “best” but the media made it look like a “decent” or worth accepting trend.

There was nothing in Gloria’s SONA that I myself had not experienced nor witnessed in front row seats. She was right with the fact that political stunts and backbiting among the Genuine Opposition was her deadliest opponent. Their accusations were cowardly done. Taking these Gloria plunder charges into public trials other than filing it in the proper courts should have been exploited by the media. However, this was ridden-on by the press to simply write stories that sell that contains nothing less than rumors or gossips.

Come to think of it, if Erap was in the seat of power as we while down the whirlwind of global recession, most would now be starving to death. The way the peso was dragging in Erap’s term; there is no denying that Juan dela Cruz would not have had the ability to feed himself a decent meal.