LUISITA
MANILA, FEBRUARY 11, 2012 (INQUIRER) Outlook By: Rigoberto
Tiglao - When President Benigno Aquino III was asked for his reaction to
the Supreme Court's decision ordering Hacienda Luisita to be turned over to its
farmers, he didn't bother to applaud this epic victory for social justice.
He instead replied quickly: "But there is also just compensation for the
landowners."
That was a slip of the tongue. If the presently embattled high court knuckles
under and rules for his kinsmen, "just compensation" would be a staggering P10
billion windfall for one of the country's most powerful elites.
The Court in its Nov. 22 resolution stipulated that "just compensation" for
the Hacienda's lands to be distributed to farmers will be determined based on
its value in 1989. That's P40,000 per hectare, which the Cojuangcos used to
determine the farmers' "stocks" in its sham land reform undertaken that year.
"Just compensation" for the 4,335 hectares would therefore total P173 million.
When the nation's attention was on the impeachment against Chief Justice
Renato Corona that was rammed through Congress Dec. 12, the Cojuangcos' law firm
Belo, Gozon, Elma, Parel, Asuncion on Dec. 16 filed a "Motion to Clarify and
Reconsider" the Court's resolution.
The motion argued that using the land's 1989 valuation is wrong, and that its
2006 market price must instead be used. That's 17 years later, during which
economic growth made a Luisita Industrial Park with adjacent malls and posh
residential areas so profitable that real estate properties there went through
the roof. From being a remote sugar plantation from some Gabriel Marquez novel,
the Hacienda has developed into an industrial-commercial area that by 2006, its
land prices had little semblance to its 1989 levels.
(In 2009, former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's
Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway project built an artery to the Hacienda that made
it so accessible from Manila. With a land area as big as Manila and Makati
combined, the Hacienda could even rival the Clark Freeport Zone.)
Under the agrarian reform department's formula for computing "just
compensation" in which the Hacienda's lands will be valued, one element includes
90 percent of the price of "comparable sales." There are "comparable sales" made
after 1989 that the Cojuangcos themselves cleverly made. One was the 1997-1998
sales by Hacienda Luisita Inc. to its wholly-owned subsidiary Luisita Realty
Corp. of 200 hectares for P500 million. The other is the 1998 sale to another
subsidiary, Centennary Holdings, of 300 hectares for P750 million. The value of
Hacienda lands based on these sales: P2.5 million per hectare. To use the DAR's
formula, 90 percent of this will be P2.25 million per hectare (the other element
in the formula, an addition, is 10 percent of market value per tax declaration).
The cost of the 4,335 hectares using 2006 as reckoning year when the land
price was P2.25 million per hectare, as the Cojuangcos are demanding, would be
P9.75 billion.
But the Cojuangcos are even asking for more—why not if they have a scion for
a president? Their motion pointed out: "The landowner must be compensated with
interest for the time that lapsed before actual payment."
That means interest must be paid on the P9.75 billion cost of land up to the
time of actual payment. At a 6-percent interest rate, that totals P580 million
annually from 2006 to whenever they are paid the P9.57 billion. If government
pays them at the end of 2012, the total interest to be paid to the Cojuangcos on
top of the P9.75 billion would be P3.5 billion.
It's a humongous amount the President's clan wants to be paid for the
Hacienda lands: P9.8 billion (excluding interest) to P13 billion (including
interest payments). Those figures are bigger than the government's 2012
P6-billion budget for agrarian reform or the P7 billion for housing.
It won't be the Hacienda's farmers who would pay the P10 billion, per
agrarian reform's principle of affordability. It would be us taxpayers.
Mr. Aquino, hands-off on the Hacienda case? It was his first appointee to the
Court, Ma. Lourdes Sereno, who prepared a mountain of arguments for the
Cojuangcos' demand for a 2006 date of reckoning. Her dissenting opinion in the
Court's July 5, 2011 decision was an angry treatise arguing for a 2006
reckoning. Her 19,000-word dissenting opinion in the November resolution even
pointed to where the government can get the huge funds (Pagcor and PCSO, among
other sources) to pay the P10 billion. Sereno in fact saved the Cojuangcos'
lawyers a lot of work, as they extensively quoted her arguments in their motion.
Mr. Aquino's two other appointees, Bienvenido Reyes and Estela
Perlas-Bernabe, have also proven to be deserving of their appointments: both
also asked for a 2006 pricing.
Note the recent impeachment move against another justice, Mariano del
Castillo, do a bit of arithmetic, and the objective of Mr. Aquino's assault
against the Court would be crystal clear.
Justice Lucas Bersamin changed his vote in July and in the November
resolution also asked for a 2006 pricing, making it four justices pushing for
the Cojuangcos' wish, as against 10 (Justice Antonio Carpio abstained). But if
Corona and Del Castillo are taken out, that would mean—since Aquino would
appoint two replacements—six pro-Cojuangco justices versus eight. That's just
two justices short for the Court to order a P10-billion payment for the
Cojuangcos.
With this regime having demonstrated its KGB-like capacity for blackmail
using stolen confidential records like bank accounts, and with the precedent of
brazenly taking out a Chief Justice, terrorizing two more justices to cave in to
the Cojuangcos' P10-billion wish, or to just go on leave, would be a walk in the
park.
Chief News Editor: Sol Jose Vanzi
© Copyright, 2012 by PHILIPPINE
HEADLINE NEWS ONLINE
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