HUNDREDS of farmers from different parts of Luzon trooped to Mendiola marking the first of a three-day anti-Charter- change protest action and demand for the distribution of haciendas to landless farmers, including the Hacienda Luisita owned by the family of President Aquino.
Dubbed as “Occupy Mendiola,” the protest action aims to exert pressure on Mr. Aquino to take the cudgels up for the landless farmers and distribute big landholdings for free, starting with the 5,000-hectare sugar estate of the Cojuangco family in Tarlac.
Despite its being covered by the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), the Cojuangcos foiled attempts to distribute Hacienda Luisita land to farmer-beneficiaries by going to court.
Led by the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP), the protesters came all the way from rural areas in Northern, Central and Southern Luzon to register their opposition to rewrite the Constitution, and condemn the government’s failure to implement agrarian reform which they said continue to deny millions of Filipinos access to agricultural land.
Danilo Ramos, secretary-general of KMP, said the Aquino administration is pursuing Charter change to pave way for a “100 percent parity rights to global foreign land-grabbers and to all-time local feudal monopolies all over the country.”
On Monday farmer-members of KMP from Ilocos Sur, Ilocos Norte, Pangasinan, La Union, Benguet, Cagayan, Isabela, Nueva Ecija, Bulacan, Pampanga, Bataan, Zambales and Tarlac, including farmworkers from Hacienda Luisita and Negros Occidental, and those from Rizal, Cavite, Laguna and Batangas, staged an “Occupy Supreme Court” protest to demand the speedy resolusion of the controversial land-dispute cases pending before SC, like the 6,453-hectare Hacienda Luisita case, the 8,650- hectare agrarian dispute in Hacienda Looc in Nasugbu, Batangas, and the 7,000- hectare land problem in Canlubang, Laguna.
In the Hacienda Luisita case, despite the SC’s denial that its latest decision on the case was tantamount to calling a referendum, farmworkers insist that it was a referendum proposed last year by and in favor of the Cojuangco-Aquino and the Hacienda Luisita management.
Also in Wednesday’s protest action at the Supreme Court, KMP and affiliate organizations and allies from North, Central and South Luzon, led by Unyon ng mga Manggagawa sa Agrikultura (UMA), Alyansa ng Magbubukid sa Gitnang Luzon (AMGL), Katipunan ng mga Samahang Magbubukid sa Timog Katagalugan (Kasama-TK), KMP-Negros, National Federation of Sugar Workers (NFSW-Negros), Pamalakaya fisherfolk alliance and Amihan peasant women federation urged the Court to reverse its decision on the P150-billion coconut-levy case which favored the President’s uncle, Eduardo “Danding” Cojuangco Jr.
The KMP leader said the “Occupy Mendiola” mass action is “a political indictment of people and institutions whose greed and penchant for agricultural land, profits and economic and political powers are irrevocable to the highest order.”
“The first ever ‘Occupy Mendiola’ action scores Cha-cha under Aquino and deplores those who will extremely benefit from selling the country’s national patrimony to monopolies led by corporations of the United States, the President himself, his uncle Danding Cojuangco and mall titan Henry Sy ----who is now into landgrabbing business to expand his real estate empire and colonies of investment houses in and out of the Philippines,” Ramos added.
