Corona on Luisita ruling: 'I am no champion. We just did what's right, fair'

Chief Justice Renato Corona on Wednesday welcomed moves by farm groups to brand him as an "agrarian reform champion," following a landmark decision by the Supreme Court to totally distribute the almost 5,000-hectare Hacienda Luisita to 6,000 farmers.

 

But the chief magistrate still insisted that he would rather not be called as such, saying: "I am not a champion."

 

"We just did what is right and fair. That is social justice as ordained by the Constitution," Corona said in a text message to GMA News Online on Wednesday. Reports have it that right before the ruling was announced in Baguio City Tuesday, hundreds of farmers, representing the Association of the Original 1989 Farmworkers of Hacienda Luisita, displayed a streamer at the court gates which described Corona as their “champion of agrarian reform.”

 

Corona also led seven other magistrates in insisting that real estate rates of Hacienda Luisita in 1989 should be used as basis for computing the just compensation to be paid to Hacienda Luisita Inc. for distributing the vast sugar plantation.

 

Meanwhile, six other justices, including President Benigno Aquino IIII's three appointees to the SC, dissented and would rather the issue on just compensation be remanded either to the Department of Agrarian Reform or a special agrarian court.

 

Asked if he thinks the SC ruling on the land dispute would trigger repercussions to his impeachment trial, Corona said: "Sigurado the administration will get back at me."

 

In November 2011, the SC ordered the hacienda be distributed to its farmer tenants for a "just compensation" of P40,000 per hectare based on the sugar estate’s value in 1989.

 

The Cojuangcos filed last Dec. 12 a motion to clarify and reconsider the order, saying the 1989 land valuation was wrong.

 

The Cojuangcos wanted just compensation based on the 2006 valuation of the estate as property values have risen with the development of malls and residential enclaves near the plantation.

 

Should the value of the estate be based on "comparable sales" such as those transacted by Hacienda Luisita Inc.–the Cojuangcos’ corporate entity–with subsidiaries Luisita Realty Corp. and Centennary Holdings Inc. in 1997 and 1998, the farmland would fetch P2.5 million per hectare, the family claimed.

 

In other words, Hacienda Luisita would be worth P9.75 billion or 90 percent of a comparable price based on a Department of Agrarian Reform formula.

 

The Cojuangco family includes the late President Corazon Aquino, mother of President Benigno Aquino III. — RSJ, GMA News