Leaders and members of Alyansa ng mga Magbubukid ng Gitnang Luson (Amgl, Farmers’ Alliance in Central Luzon) and its Hacienda Luisita chapter Alyansa ng Manggagawang Bukid sa Asyenda Luisita (Ambala, Farmworkers’ Alliance in Hacienda Luisita) brought their protest in front of president Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino’s inherited house along Times street in Quezon City. The groups said that the president’s family has continued its effort to sabotage the land distribution that the Supreme Court decided on its November 22, 2011 and April 24, 2012 landmark decision.
“Aquino and his family are shameless to disrupt the supposedly swift distribution of Hacienda Luisita lands to the 6,296 farmworker-beneficiaries. It is apparent that Aquino has commanded the Dept. of Agrarian Reform to delay the implementation of the SC decision,” Joseph Canlas said, Amgl chairperson.
Amgl and Ambala are referring to DAR’s measures of scrutinizing the list of farmworkers to the extent of violating the decision of the Supreme Court. DAR has considered the moves of the Cojuangco-Aquino family to confuse the list of FWBs by submitting a list of about 10,000 names.
“DAR has been making itself busy with non-sense and wasting much precious time. They already have the list of the 6,296 FWBs but they are tolerating the motion of the president’s family which is clearly a delaying tactic,” Rodel Mesa said, Ambala chairperson.
Since the April 24, 2012 decision of the Supreme Court, DAR has only implemented an information drive about the decision and accomodating more names as FWBs. The groups said that DAR’s moves of sowing false hopes to those who are not on the list would spark an insurmountable rage.
“DAR under Aquino has been sowing confusion among farmworkers, infusing disunity among those on the list and not. Ambala has been organizing and educating farmworkers that those who are interested in cultivating the land should benefit through collective farming and not by individualized, small-scale and more expensive production,” Canlas said.
The groups also condemned the conspiracy between the Cojuangco-Aquinos and the Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. (RCBC) that is claiming 184-hectares of land in Brgy. Balete.
“RCBC and the Cojuangcos has colluded to launch their Oplan April Spring which main objective is to confuse the farm workers and split Ambala. They are dead wrong to think that they would succeed. Ambala has expelled many leaders such as Noel Mallari who compromised our fundamental principle of attaining genuine land reform in the hacienda,” Mesa said.
“We are going to wage these protest actions closer and closer to Aquino until each child of the oppressed farm worker families has benefited from the distribution of the lands. He should remember that this struggle started since 1967 and it would only end until his family’s clutches on the land are finally broken,” Canlas said. #
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