SC defers ruling on Hacienda Luisita case

MANILA, Philippines -  Justices of the Supreme Court (SC) failed yesterday to vote on the legality of orders of the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council (PARC) and Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) to distribute the 6,453-hectare Hacienda Luisita to 10,000 farmers and revoke the stock distribution option that the Cojuangco-Aquino clan had offered to them.

The vote was set again for the SC session on Tuesday next week.

SC spokesman Midas Marquez said yesterday Associate Justice Presbitero Velasco Jr., who is in charge of the case, has already drafted a decision, but he refused to go into details.

“Opinions of the justices are already circulating, and they are set to vote on this in the next (full-court) session,” he said.

It would become the official SC ruling if it gets the majority vote during the next session on Tuesday, he added.

Earlier in the day, some 50 Hacienda Luisita farmers from Unyon ng Manggagawa sa Agrikultura (UMA) picketed the SC in Manila to reiterate their call for final resolution of the land dispute.

“Honorable Chief Justice Renato Corona, please allow us to remind you and all members of this collegiate body that there is a saying that justice delayed is justice denied,” said UMA secretary-general

Rodel Mesa.

The Hacienda Luisita case was taken out of the SC’s shelf last year, four years after the court issued a temporary restraining order on the distribution of the plantation to farmers under the government’s Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP).

The farmers specifically asked Corona to recall the TRO issued by Associate Justice Leonardo Quisumbing, now retired, in June

2006 that stopped the orders of PARC and DAR.

In August last year, the SC held oral arguments on the case.

It also created a mediation panel to end the dispute between Hacienda Luisita Inc. (HLI) and its farmer-beneficiaries though amicable settlement, which has been suspended after parties failed to reach an agreement after six meetings within the 30-day period the SC had prescribed.

The panel chaired by retired SC justice Alicia Austria-Martinez, has opted to leave to the SC the decision on whether to continue with the mediation.