SC forms panel to mediate in Luisita land dispute case

The Supreme Court on Thursday formed a three-member panel composed of retired justices that will mediate in the Hacienda Luisita land dispute case involving the family of President Benigno Aquino III. The panel has 30 days to mediate between petitioner Hacienda Luisita Inc. (HLI) and respondents Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR), Presidential Agrarian Reform Council (PARC), and farmer-beneficiaries. Appointed chairperson of the panel was retired SC Associate Justice Ma. Alicia Austria-Martinez, while the members are retired Court of Appeals Justices Hector Hofilena and Teresita Dy-LIacco Flores. “The parties and their respective counsels are ordered to strictly comply with the instructions and directives of the mediation panel," the SC said in its three-page notice. The proposal to form a mediation panel came from Supreme Court Associate Justice Presbitero Velasco, an expert in land disputes, during the August 24 oral arguments. Prior to entering the judiciary, Velasco served as commissioner of the Committee on Settlement on Land Disputes and Housing and Land Use Regulatory Board. All justices favored the creation of the panel, except Associate Justices Antonio Carpio and Antonio Eduardo Nachura, who did not participate in the oral arguments and the hearings regarding the Hacienda Luisita case. Justices Arturo Brion and Diosdado Peralta, meanwhile, were on official leave. In May 1989, the Cojuangco-owned HLI and Tarlac Development Corp. (TADECO) forged a Stock Distribution Option agreement with more than 6,200 farmer beneficiaries. Under the SDO scheme, farmer beneficiaries are given shares of stocks instead of the land that they were asking. In 2005, the PARC ordered land distribution and the revocation of the SDO agreement because it did not fulfill the 1988 Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law’s thrust of social justice and improved lives for farmers. In 2006, the HLI asked the Supreme Court to stop the PARC from canceling the SDO scheme and ordering land distribution. The SC granted the corporation’s plea by issuing a temporary restraining order preventing PARC from enforcing the resolution against the stock distribution option scheme. In August this year, HLI and the farmer beneficiaries entered into a compromise deal, where farmers are given the option to retain their stocks in the sugar plantation, or to get their share of land from the 6,543-hectare sugar estate in Tarlac province. - Sophia Regina Dedace/KBK, GMANews.TV