Bomb Shrapnels
The living time bomb. 1..2..kaput.
A New York Times story showed that Senator Noynoy Aquino was not being truthful when he said that his family is ready to re-distribute Hacienda Luisita to its tenant-farmers in case he gets elected President in May.
No less than a cousin of Noynoy who is the chief operating officer of Hacienda Luisita Inc. (HLI) exposed the presidential candidate’s doublespeak when Fernando Cojuangco told the Times that: “No, we’re not going to.”
Cojuangco’s reply to a question by NY Times Asia bureau chief Norimitsu Onishi directly contradicted Noynoy’s earlier pronouncements in the land dispute that has already claimed the lives of seven farmers in what is now known as the Hacienda Luisita Massacre of 2004.
The NY Times stood pat on its story even as its Philippine correspondent Carlos Conde said in his website that: “We stand by our March 16, 2010, story on Hacienda Luisita. Our interview with Mr. Fernando Cojuangco… was recorded. If Mr. Cojuangco wishes the tape to be released to the public, we will gladly do so.”
Noynoy and Fernando both refused to take on the Times’ challenge for the tape to be released to the public, leading people to suspect that there may be more damning details that could come out from it.
In the Times article, Fernando Cojuangco also tried to belie that land reform was a centerpiece of the administration of Noynoy’s mother, the late President Cory Aquino, as an excuse for Luisita not being given back to farmers.
Noynoy’s family should have given back the land to the farmers as early as 1967, as per the provisions of its loan from GSIS whose proceeds it used to purchase Luisita with.
But till now, Noynoy’s family had kept its stranglehold on Luisita through its use of a stock distribution scheme instead of giving the farmers titles to the land, a ploy deemed illegal by the Presidential Agrarian Reform Commission (PARC).
The Cojuangcos had sought a temporary restraining order before the Supreme Court against the PARC ruling, prompting Cavite Rep. Crispin “Boying” Remulla to challenge Noynoy to show his sincerity by withdrawing the TRO.
Hacienda Luisita is also at the epicenter of what Remulla dubbed as the “SCTEX Massacre” pertaining to some P83 million in right-of-way fees the family pocketed from the road project, as well as the P179 million cost of the interchange that connected Luisita to the SCTEX roadway, for the sole benefit of Noynoy’s family.
Columnist Conrado de Quiros was almost choking on tears when he recounted Monday the righteous combustion that was Edsa 1.
“They were there to end a regime that had ground the country to heel, that had stolen not just the people’s wealth but the people’s lives, the people’s hopes, the people’s future.” De Quiros wrote about the multitudes who, dreaming the impossible dream, rushed to Camp Aguinaldo 24 years ago to become “the battering ram called Edsa.”
What De Quiros forgot to disclose in his reverie was that he had been on the other side of the fence during those years of living dangerously. He was firmly entrenched in the Marcos camp even after the strongman had already fled, polishing propaganda for the hero that he now publicly trashes.
Along with now press freedom fighter Luis Teodoro and Ateneo professor Benito Lim, De Quiros led the Marcos speech-writing collective nurtured by government finances and government housing. De Quiros, to this day, still lives in the Marcos-provided NHA townhouse complex behind SM City North Edsa.
The speech-writing collective was employed by the Presidential Center for Special Studies under the late Adrian Cristobal, first under the Presidential Center for Advanced Studies, in the University of the Philippines and later under the renamed PCSS after PCAS, under fire from the underground opposition within the state university, decamped from Diliman to a rented safehouse in New Manila’s Ilang-Ilang street.
It was there that De Quiros and company had been overtaked by Edsa 1 events.
Despite what he now claims as having been enchanted by “the province of Angelus” when Cory Aquino drew hundreds of thousands to Luneta during the dying days of the Marcos regime, De Quiros chose to stick it out with PCSS, even after Marcos had fled, until the office was abolished, and the De Quiros collective rendered jobless, by Cory Aquino herself.
According to a colleague who asked not to be identified by name, the firing led to a blue period for the Marcos speechwriter, a bitterness that apparently lingered well into the end of the Cory Aquino presidency, calling her the “Queen of Darkness” for her eight-hour brownout legacy during his Philippine Daily Globe days.
The bitterness again burst in the aftermath of the Hacienda Luisita massacre, when De Quiros, in columns after columns in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, skewered in leftwing indignation not only the Cojuangcos but also Benigno Aquino III himself.
—- Victor C. Agustin
published on Cocktales, Manila Standard Today, February 24, 2010
The trouble with Noynoy’s February 9 pronouncement is that it is only being done after Noynoy had already dropped to a steep dive ending in a statistical tie with Manny Villar.
When I sent messages to Noynoy Aquino through friends like Tony Aquino (no relations) and Popoy Juico, that he should not join this presidential race because he will just render not only himself but his family as fair game, my best intentions were ignored and instead I was insulted.
Now everybody knows that the greatest obstacle to a Noynoy presidency is precisely Hacienda Luisita, his pedigree and an unprepared self. On the other hand, he would had a golden opportunity to clean up the Hacienda Luisita issue first, ear more brownie points, and fix his private life, before he runs in 2016.
That is now impossible without losing a lot of credibility as it is now obvious that he is only doing what is right and observing the law in order to court votes. There is no political will and righteousness involved here but patchwork remedial action in order to attempt to save the sinking ship of his forlorn candidacy.
As I have rpedicted last October, Noynoy’s star is dead in the water.
His problem will metastasize to other issues of integrity that his entire campaign hinges on, so let us not oversimplify the problem. This is not as easy as shifting to low gear in anticipation of an upclimb.
Before Noynoy ran for president, nobody even knows what Hacienda Lusita is. The best I knew was that it was a restop on the way to Baguio.
Today, the evil that Hacienda Luisita engenders has been exposed to its very bone and marrow - from the behest and corrupt nature of its acquisition in 1958 by Noynoy’s grandfather Jose Cpjuangco Sr. after being negotiated by Noynoy’s own father Ninoy Aquino, to its failure to be distributed in 1968 as stipulated by its loan contracts with the GSIS and DBP, to the furious legal maneuvers to keep it until again further ordered redistributed in 1985 by a Regional Trial Court, to the failure of Corty Aquino to honor redistribution when she was president and in fact her overly creative avoidance in going the Stock Distribution Option (SDO) way, to Gloria Arroyo’s spurious accommodation of Cory’s request to make the Subic Clark Tarlax Express (SCTEX) tollway reach the property including a complimentary flyover charged to the Filipino taxpayer, to fomenting the massacre of 2004 and subsequent extrajudicial assassinations of dissident farmers thereafter, to Cory’s falling out with Gloria Arroyo that restarted the Department of Agrarian Reform’s initiatives to revive the redistribution issue until stopped by the winning of an injunction by the Supreme Court late last year, but superseded by the passing of the extension of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law (or CARPer) that has abolished the SDO provision.
How can Noynoy reverse all this? He is too little too late. Besides he has began fumbling on his toes as he attempts to get out of the sure rot.
When I learned about this scandal of historical and generational proportions, I immediately infered that only reason Noynoy was running was to save Hacienda Lusita for the Cojuangco clan. It was to preserve a cacique oligarchy.
A few weeks ago, as he attempted to squeeze uncomfortably out of the issue, he said he only owned 1.1% of the plantation or 66 hectares equivalent. He also said that his first sudden concern is to provide livelihood for the farmers and workers who have been deprived of work for the past ten years.
That exposed his innate lack of sensitivity - a sensitive person who has been one of Hacienda Luisita’s key executives would have noticed right away on week one that thousands are deprived of income and are desperately going hungry around him as the same time that they receiving their fat salaries and benefits. That also exposed his tradpol instincts - he would only try to appease his public first with seeming win-win palliatives rather than looking for solutions to the root cause of the problem that in this case his family created.
Now he is saying he owns 1/32 or 187 hectares equivalent. That is a triple jump. Ano ba talaga? Many rich people do not even have ten hectares to their name.
And what solution can he leverage the 31/32 other owners, e hindi pa siya presidente? This is putting the cart before the horse.
Are you asking the voting public to grant even just for the sake of argument, that the rest of the clan is as magnanimous as its smallest stockholder (Noynoy) who needs a quick fix because he is deadlocked on his way to Malacanang by this evil Hacienda.
Where will the voters anchor their trust, on the Noynoy’s insensitivity and tradpol instincts? The way the campaign is maturing already presents a very vague picture of where Noynoy will lead us all. It is just the promise of Camelot out there.
Assuming he fixes the distribution issue, what about the SCTEX issue of a deal greatly disadvantageous to the government that he wants to be chief executive of? What kind of retribution and restoration will offer as balm for that graft-ridden deal?
Further assuming he succeeds past that, what is he going to do with his uncle Danding’s plundering the cocolevy funds during the Marcos regime? Will he return all wealth and acquisitions involved there, including San Miguel Corporation, back to the coconuit farmers?
This is now mission impossible.
All the expectant king’s men and horses cannot put Noynoy back together again.
What is his message now? Elect me president so I can fix Hacienda Lusita?
A man who cannot rule over 6,000 hectares has no business being president of 7,107 islands.
By the sheer fantasy of Camelot-seekers surrounding him, his candidacy opened the can of worms Ninoy and Cory Aquino have been keeping from public eye all these years. No thanks to Boy and Maria Montelibano, Conrad de Quiros, Billy Esposo, Lito Banayo and Rodel Rodis, who direly needed a village idiot to launch to themselves to power.
As we speak investigative writers are now on the hot trail of both Ninoy and Cory whose mythical glass ceiling has been shattered by the autistic recklessness of their son’s candidacy. There is now a lead that in exchange for returning to the Lopezes all those allegedly sequestered by Marcos from them, Cory Aquino is now the controlling interest of all those companies, including Meralco and ABSCBN, and new ventures like the North Luzon Expressway Tollroads.
What is my unsolicited advice for Noynoy?
The most judicious way for Noynoy Aquino at this juncture, if he is really a man of integrity and substance, is to withdraw from the presidential race, giving way to Mar Roxas who is showing a runaway in the vice presidential polls. Kiko Pangilinan can serve as Mar’s running mate.
If the Cory Magic or “Witchcraft” as Hacienda now shows, failed Noynoy, maybe the combined aura of Korinna Sanchez and megastar Sharon Cuneta can regain for the Liberal Party its fast waning stardom.
Like Ninoy and Cory’s oft-repeated image-building soundbite, Noynoy now must do the supreme sacrifice.
It is just unfortunate that in the process, the couple’s way to sainthood has irreverently been wasted by the new evidence of greed and deception.
But returning to private life and fixing the Hacienda away from the silver lining, Noynoy will at least not have to apologize anymore for his sister Kris chasing around her husband James chasing around other women’s panties, and the rest of his dysfunctional family.
In order to quell rumors about his sexuality, he can even plan of getting married already because a man of age 50 is best with a partner in life to share his final years.
And by partner, I mean a female, of course.
Then after repairing his fences, and acquiring more verifiable achievements for the next six years, he can reconstruct his presidential campaign to present the people a more workable proposition in 2016.
—-Adolfo Paglinawan
How the hell can this guy lead the country, if he can’t even fix the problems in his own backyard?!? Sheeesh.
Sen. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino does not come to the presidential race with clean hands, as they have been bloodied by two massacres: The Hacienda Luisita massacre of the striking farmers and the “massacre” of the original Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway (SCTex) project, shepherding its overprice while he and his family benefited from the project.
The truth behind the Cojuangco’s control over Hacienda Luisita and the SCTEX scandal hounding presidentiable Noynoy Aquino
In the Tarlac massacre, government has said that the soldiers and police units deployed at the height of the strike were “outnumbered” by the protesters who were able to mass up 4,000-strong. And so sword had to be unleashed: an APC (armored personnel carrier) rammed through the workers’ picketline while machine gun and snipers’ bullets were fired into the crowd from several directions coming – so surviving victims and eyewitnesses said – from atop buildings of the hacienda. Apparently, the strike was violently broken to allow at least 50 truckloads of sugarcane to be milled, also inside the hacienda, and hence allow the Cojuangcos to continue reaping some more money.
