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By BenCyrus G. Ellorin

Nobody cared what Noynoy Cojuanco Aquino did or not do when he was congressman representing the Second district of Tarlac for nine years. Nobody cared when he run for Senator in 2007. Perhaps, people thought, another Aquino in the Senate is no big deal.

In a Nacionalista Party press release on March 19, 2010, Mindanawon and Senatorial candidate Adel Tamano accused the younger Aquino of doing a Gloria after the New York Times came out with a story that exposed the real intentions of the Cojuanco family in the Hacienda Luisita.

That despite all the Liberal Party (LP) candidate’s spinning that their family is planning to distribute the more than 6,000-hectare Hacienda Luisita to the farmers as mandated by the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Hacienda Luisita Inc. (HLI) may have inadvertently exposed the young Aquino’s duplicity on the Luisita issue.

The presidential candidate’s cousin Fernando Cojuanco, HLI CEO was quoted by one of the most credible newspapers in the world as saying when asked about whether the Cojuanco’s plan to distribute the land to the farmers as mandated by the Agrarian Reform law, “No, we’re not going to… I think it would be irresponsible because I feel that continuing what we have here is the way to go. Sugar farming has to be; it’s the kind of business that has to be done plantation-style.”

Caught with his hands in the cookie jar, Noynoy Aquino immediately issued a spin, accusing the New York Times of quoting his cousin out of context. But this spin blew in his face as the NY Times offered to make public the audio recording of the interview and denied ever twisting out of context what the HLI CEO had said.

Tamano had likened this action of the young Aquino with Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo who at first denied that she was the woman who ordered then Election Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano to ensure that her lead in the Mindanao count against the late actor Fernando Poe Jr. be not less than one-million votes. That was early June 2005. Later on June 27, 2005, she said sorry for making lapses in judgment for making a telephone call to an election Commissioner at the height of the 2004 Presidential election vote count in a nationally televised address.

I however find Tamano’s GloriAquino tale a little over-stretched metaphor which led me to research on the stand of then Tarlac Representative Noynoy Aquino in the Hello Garci hearings and his role in the Luisita.

I found out that Noynoy Aquino voted against the playing of the wiretapped telephone conversation dubbed the Hello Garci tapes in the June 30, 2005 hearings in the House of Representatives. The House eventually voted to play the controversial tapes.

The “No” vote of Noynoy to the playing of the Hello Garci tapes, I think was on the behest of Malacanang’s occupant. And I think, in order to protect their feudal interests, the Cojuanco-Aquinos have betrayed public trust in the Hello Garci hearings.

It should be remembered that in November 2004, striking workers of the Hacienda Luisita were massacred, claiming the lives of 12 protesting farmers and two children and wounding hundreds more. Farmers pressing for the land distribution of the more than 6,000-has hacienda were mowed down by hails of gunfire when police and military troops stormed the picket lines.

As a result of the public opinion backlash after the massacre, the government through the Dept. of Agrarian Reform (DAR) was forced to review the controversial Stock Distribution Option (SDO) which is a queer agrarian reform scheme that converts into stocks the value of lands which should have been distributed physically to qualified farmers. In March 2005, the Task Force Luisita was formed to review the Luisita SDO.

With the interests of the Cojuancos’ and Aquinos’ in Luisita at stake, it is not farfetched that a quid quo pro of sorts was brokered between them and the distressed occupant of Malacanang and thus the adversarial stand of Noynoy to the playing of the Hello Garci tapes.

Although the LP presidential candidate does lip service of giving their huge landholdings to the farmers as legally mandated, his role in the Luisita is more than what meets the eye. In fact, in the killings and violence that followed the November 2004 massacre, some of his security aides have been allegedly linked to the shooting of peasant leaders in their hacienda like the shooting of protesters George Loveland and Ernesto Ramos on January 5, 2005.

The killings and violence perpetrated on the farmers longing for genuine agrarian reform in the Hacienda Luisita has continued long after the massacre. This included the assassination of a retired soldier who was about testify on the November 2004 massacre Marcelino Beltran, councilor Abel Ladera, Aglipayan priest William Tadena, HLI workers/farmers Flor Collantes, Ben Concepcion and Ric Ramos. These killings have been included in the long list of human rights violations in the 2008 Impeachment Complaint against Gloria Macapagal Arroyo which accused her, among others of turning a blind eye to the Luisita issue.

Long before Noynoy declared his intention to run for President but already certain power brokers in Manila started their crazy run to thrust him into the presidency after the death of the well-loved Corazon Cojuanco-Aquino, I have already said my piece on Noynoy’s apparent run for the highest position of the land.

In my Sept. 4, 2009 column Rizal’s Tasio and Noynoy , I invoked Rizal’s writing in Noli mi Tangere about our misplaced loyalties or “bilib” mentality to the scions of well-to-do families when he wrote through the character Protacio “I honor the father on account of the son and not the son on account of the father.”

This is what I see in the candidacy of the Cojuanco-Aquino scion. It is as an attempt of the traditional power block in Manila to push elite, oligarchic rule in the country.

And who better represents this than this lackluster politician with presumed pedigree but represents the marriage of the old feudal lords and bourgeois comprador classes.

Recommended reading: Rizal’s Tasio and Noynoy, Sept. 4, 2009

Comments can be sent to bency.ellorin@gmail.com. The writer is a community organizer, environmentalist and peace advocate based in Cagayan de Oro City, Philippines.