Amid People Power month, Duterte urged: Lead a real EDSA in haciendas, remove ex-Marcos crony Cojuangco’s grip over 5,000-hectare Negros landholding
Task Force Mapalad
February 26, 2019
Hundreds of peasants who were already issued certificates of land ownership award (CLOA) but whose landholdings remain under the control of business tycoon Eduardo “Danding” Cojuangco Jr. are urging President Rodrigo Duterte to “do a real EDSA” by ending the former Marcos crony’s monopoly over a nearly 5,000-hectare property in Negros Occidental, consisting of 12 haciendas.
“The more than 30-year-old Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) was an offshoot of the 1986 People Power as Filipinos, including peasants, did not only move for the ouster of a dictator but also for the end of widespread poverty and injustice in haciendas. Also, the 1986 uprising gave birth to the 1987 Charter that upheld the rights of landless peasants to own directly and collectively the lands they till and receive a just share of the fruits thereof,” said Noel Magan, president of the ECJ CLOA Holders and Farm Workers Association-Task Force Mapalad (ECHAFAWA-TFM).
“But the EDSA that we pushed and longed for didn’t become a reality in the vast tracts of land we had been tilling for decades. Up to now, just like during the Marcos regime, Cojuangco remains the lord of these landholdings. We thus urge President Duterte, as chief of the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council (PARC), the country’s highest agrarian reform policy-making body, to make EDSA happen in these haciendas,” Magan added.
Moreover, Magan noted that it had already been a year since the PARC Executive Committee, headed by Agrarian Reform Secretary John Castriciones, issued on Feb. 22, 2018 a resolution recommending to Duterte the revocation of Cojuangco’s joint venture agreement with his former workers in haciendas awarded to the latter through the CARP.
“We will not forget what you said in May 2016 immediately after you won the presidency. You said, ‘I despised oligarchs (because) they get the fat out of the land.’ In August of the same year, you promised that you would ‘destroy the clutches of monster oligarchs in our country,’” Magan told Durterte.
“Here is an example of a stubborn oligarch, who continues to squeeze wealth from our backs. We still believe in your 2016 promise, Mr. President. Please end our misery by ending Cojuangco’s reign. Please immediately convene the PARC and uphold the recommendation of your council’s executive committee to cancel Danding’s business venture involving our haciendas,” he added.
Tree decades of CARP, three decades of Cojuangco control
The TFM peasant leader is referring to the 12 contiguous haciendas found in the cities of Bago and La Carlota and the towns of La Castellana, Isabela, Hinigaran, Murcia, San Enrique, Himamaylan, and Pontevedra, all in Negros Occidental.
Magan said these were acquired by Cojuangco during the Marcos regime and placed under sequestration by the Presidential Commission on Good Government, but until now remain under the control of the San Miguel Corp. chair even after three decades of CARP implementation.
The haciendas, covering a total area of 4,654 hectares that were planted with assorted fruit trees such as mango, durian, pili, santol, and mangosteen, should have already been distributed by the Department of Agrarian Reform to its 1,756 tillers as early as 1988 or until 1992.
Republic Act 6657 or the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law (CARL) of 1988 mandates the DAR to distribute to landless farmers private agricultural landholdings of more than 50 hectares within a period of four years since CARL became effective.
Despite the law, Cojuangco remained the owner of these commercial landholdings. In 1988, during the administration of Cojuangco’s cousin, the late President Corazon Aquino, then DAR chief Philip Ella Juico issued Administrative Order No. 16 deferring for 10 years the distribution to farmers of commercial agricultural landholdings.
Ten years later, in 1998, as the land distribution deferment ended, and it was supposedly already time for Cojuangco’s 12 haciendas to be distributed to its tillers, the DAR, under the Estrada administration, came up with what it called the “corporative” scheme — a fusion of the words “corporation” and “cooperative” – that allowed Cojuangco to retain control of the haciendas, by forming an agribusiness partnership with his hacienda workers.
‘Cojuangco, definitely not the farmers’ selfless ninong’
While certificates of land ownership award (CLOA) were generated by the DAR in 1998 in favor of the farm workers of the 12 haciendas, making them the new owners of the landholdings, the CARP beneficiaries were not able to have direct control over the management and production decisions in their own land.
Through DAR Administrative Order No. 2 of 1999, issued by then DAR Secretary Horacio Morales Jr., which set the rules and regulations for establishing JEE — Estrada’s initials — meaning Joint Economic Enterprises, it made it possible for Cojuangco to maintain control of the 12 haciendas.
During a much-hyped announcement covered by the media, Cojuangco said in 1998 that he would give away his Negros haciendas, valued at P350,000 per hectare, to his farm workers for a token fee of P1 per hectare. This earned him praise from then President Estrada, Cojuangco’s vice presidential running mate in the 1992 polls, who called the SMC chair the benevolent “godfather of land reform.”
Cojuangco’s supposed donation of the haciendas to his farm workers, however, was not without a trade-off. While he waived the compensation – worth about P1.6 billion – in exchange for the DAR’s acquisition of his landholdings and their distribution to his workers, Cojuangco made the establishment of a joint economic enterprise with the CARP beneficiaries of his landholdings a condition to his not receiving the compensation.
“Even when we were already CLOA holders and could already start charting our lives without being slaves of a landlord, Cojuangco, refused to part with us, definitely not because he was a true, selfless, generous ninong, as claimed by Estrada,” said Magan, who is among some 1,200 CLOA holders of the 12 haciendas urging Duterte’s PARC to void their joint enterprise with Cojuangco.
“Through a manipulative scheme that created corporate layers, separating us from directly managing our own land, Cojuangco was able to continue his greedy grip over the 12 haciendas, until he was able to dilute our rights and control over our CARP-awarded property, until we came back to who we were before, when we were still landless – hungry, poor, and powerless,” he added.
After the DAR cancelled Cojuangco’s land titles to the haciendas and issued CLOAs to the businessman’s workers in 1998, making them the new landowners, the same certificates were again cancelled by the department.
Another CLOA, a collective title, was generated by the DAR in 2003 and was issued to the ECJ Farmworkers Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries Multipurpose Cooperative (EFARBEMCO), making it the new owner of the haciendas that would transact with Cojuangco’s ECJ & Sons Agricultural Enterprises, Inc. under the joint economic enterprise deal.
Under the business deal between EFARBEMCO and ECJ & Sons, the use of the landholdings owned by Magan and his fellow CARP beneficiaries would be assigned to the joint enterprise in exchange for a 30 percent equity, while Cojuangco’s camp would get 70 percent-equity in exchange for providing capital, facilities, and technical expertise to operate the haciendas.
‘Our land rights were thinned down, even erased’
In 2004, EFARBEMCO and ECJ & Sons entered in a new joint venture agreement, creating another entity – the South Negros Joint Venture Corporation (SNJVC) – that was given by the cooperative the right to develop, operate, cultivate, and improve the 12 haciendas for 20 years or until 2024, renewable for another two decades.
Magan said SNJVC’s creation further took away their right to directly control and manage their land as the corporation gave Cojuangco the right to nominate eight of the SNJVC’s board members, while only four could be nominated by the cooperative.
Worse, Magan said SNJVC was given the right to transfer the management of their haciendas for three crop years from 2016 to 2019 to another entity – the Caña Dulce Agro Industrial, Inc. represented by Miguel S. Hinojales, Lagrimas H. Llorca and Michael Andrew V. Hinojales – after the SNJVC decided to change the crops planted in the landholdings from fruits to sugarcane.
“First, it was just between us, the farmer-landowners and the cooperative; then it became between the cooperative and Cojuangco; then between Cojuangco and his eight SNJVC board members and the four other board members representing the cooperative; and finally, just between the Cojuangco-led SNJVC and Caña Dulce,” said Magan.
“Our right to our own land was clearly thinned down, even erased through this deceptive layering scheme by Cojuangco,” he added.
PARC committee recommends revocation of Danding joint venture
In a July 7, 2017, the DAR’s National Agribusiness Venture Arrangements Evaluation Committee (NAEC) headed by then Undersecretary Rosalina Bistoyong informed the PARC through an eight-page memo that Magan and his fellow farmers’ joint venture scheme with Cojuangco “can be revoked” because it did not improve the economic status of the CARP beneficiaries.
NAEC further told the PARC that each CARP beneficiary, owning 2.56 hectares of the nearly 5,000-hectare property, only received P10,000 yearly or P833 monthly profit from the said scheme, which failed to meet the objectives stated in DAR A.O. 2 of 1999 that was used as legal basis for Cojuangco’s joint venture scheme with his former hacienda workers.
Among A.O. 2’s objectives are “to enable” farmers “to enjoy the full benefits of agrarian reform” as well as “ensure the security of tenure and security of income of participating agrarian reform beneficiaries” through the joint venture.
The NAEC memo to the PARC prompted the council’s executive committee to recommend in February 2018 to Duterte the revocation of the joint venture, noting that the lives of the CARP beneficiaries did not improve under the scheme.
Cojuangco admits joint venture not earning
The joint venture under the SNJVC being constantly in the red was in fact admitted by Cojuangco himself through his March 19, 2018 letter addressed to the PARC, noting that the corporation had been “incurring substantial losses over the past 12 years…”
Documents from the DAR based on reports from the SNJVC, showed that the joint venture’s operations from 2005 to 2016 resulted in total losses of P2.9 billion.
Magan said Cojuangco’s claim that the venture was at a loss was felt by the farmers because of their consistently low profit share from the business deal, their average gross salary as workers in their own haciendas worth only P4,900 monthly, which would become smaller with the SSS and Pag-Ibig remittances, withholding tax, and loans for grocery and medicine that they had to pay.
“There were times when our take-home pay would only be P150, prompting us to continuously borrow money and bury ourselves in debt. This is our plight under the joint venture deal with Cojuangco. This is the truth and not Cojuangco’s promise in 1998 that his partnership with us would turn us into dons and doñas,” he said.
However, despite admitting that the venture did not become financially viable, Cojuangco in the same March 19, 2018 letter, appealed to the PARC Executive Committee to allow the continuance of the business partnership.
“We trust that the PARC ExCom will grant us and our partner-cooperative the opportunity to present and explain our position with the end…view of justifying the viability of the joint venture we have collectively pursued,” Cojuangco said in the letter.
The businessman noted that beginning in crop year 206 to 2017, the joint venture gained P103.3 million from sugar cane farming, which translated to increased yearly benefits for the CARP beneficiaries worth P17,648 per person in 2017 from only P10,000 in earlier years.
In the letter, Cojuangco projected that in the next seven cropping years from 2018 to 2024, the SNJVC’s profit from sugarcane farming would improve and translate to increased yearly benefits for CARP beneficiaries amounting between P24,213 and P55,285 per individual.
However, Cojuangco also admitted in the letter to the PARC that recovering SNJVC’s losses “would be quite impossible for the remaining duration of the JVA” or until 2024, even with the increase in the CARP beneficiaries’ yearly benefits.
Farmers to earn much better without Cojuangco
But Magan said he and his fellow CARP beneficiaries would have much better income if they would end their business deal with Cojuangco and the PARC would revoke the joint venture and allow them to directly control and manage their farms.
“We don’t need Cojuangco or his camp’s assistance in growing sugarcane. We know how to grow cane and built profit from it because we had been sugar workers for a long time. It was only that before, we didn’t own the land and thus landlords — and not us — largely benefitted from the profit,” he said.
Based on the computation of Magan and his fellow CARP beneficiaries of the Cojuangco hacienda, each beneficiary with 2.6 hectares of land would earn an average profit of P352,800 in the first three years of sugarcane farming or P117,600 annually if the he or she makes the land productive outside of the joint venture.
“That profit is way above Cojuangco’s estimate of P24,213 to P55,285 yearly profit for each CARP beneficiary under the joint venture scheme. Our profit would even be much bigger if the DAR would provide support services to us,” said Magan.
“If our lives can be much better without Cojuangco, and if he already admitted that the joint venture had failed and it would be impossible for the SNJVC to recoup its losses, why does he not want to leave us alone? Why can’t he part with a land that no longer belongs to him and make him lose huge amounts of money? That is the one billion-peso question,” he added.
