Family business

How do you define a tenant farmer? It’s an interesting question in an agricultural estate where every step of crop production from sowing to irrigation, fertilization and harvesting is mechanized.

We have a folk ditty, which opens with, “Planting rice is never fun.” You’re bowed down the whole day, with few breaks to stretch out or sit down. Planting rice is backbreaking work.

In this country, rice farmers were initially given priority as agrarian reform beneficiaries. Ferdinand Marcos subdivided farms and awarded each tenant farmer seven hectares of rice land.

Marcos, with his dictatorial powers, hesitated to include sugar estates in his land reform program. Critics say this was meant to shield his cronies’ holdings from land reform.

Another explanation for the exemption is that the nature of the work is different for producing rice and sugar. Or at least that’s what representatives of Hacienda Luisita Inc. (HLI) told STAR editors recently as they explained the stock distribution option (SDO) whose fate is now before the Supreme Court.

Fernando “Nando” Cojuangco, 48, is the fifth child of Pedro Cojuangco, eldest of the six children of Jose “Pepe” Sr. and Demetria Cojuangco.

Don Pedro’s most famous sibling is the late President Corazon Aquino. During her presidency, we were told that it was Don Pedro who ran the 6,400-hectare sugar estate and she had no direct participation in its management.

But the six siblings had equal shares in the holding company of HLI, Jose Cojuangco & Sons Inc., where Nando is the chief operating officer. Apart from HLI, the Cojuangco mother firm manages Central Azucarera de Tarlac, Luisita Marketing Corp., Luisita Realty Corp., Tarlac Development Corp. (Tadeco), Tarlac Distillery Corp., JC Enterprises Inc. and Centenary Holding Corp.

President Cory’s shares have been inherited by her five children, whose most prominent member is no longer superstar Kris but President Noynoy.

The holding firm owns 67 percent of the shares of stock of HLI. Again, that 67 percent is equally distributed among the six siblings and their children – a little over 11 percent for P-Noy’s family, or 2.2 percent each per sibling. Nando told us that his generation of Cojuangcos has 32 members.

The Supreme Court is currently deliberating on a petition to invalidate the stock distribution option that a majority of the Luisita tenants opted for in a referendum of sorts conducted by the HLI management.

Critics of the deal say the tenants were misled into voting for the SDO instead of demanding land ownership, complete with titles, in the hacienda, the largest sugar plantation in this country. The SDO, inserted into the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law by the first post-Marcos Congress, is widely seen as a way of avoiding the parceling of large agricultural estates.

The reticent Nando Cojuangco says his aunt Corazon decided to include sugar estates in the land reform program without consulting the clan.

With the dispute now before the Supreme Court, Nando says the hacienda management is ready to bow to the will of the tribunal and the tenants. He notes that there are small sugar lands that have been a success.

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Families normally fight to keep their businesses and properties intact. But having the President and his sisters as shareholders, and their mother before them, makes Hacienda Luisita a unique family business. Although P-Noy has no say in running the business, he is seen as a spokesman for the clan, no matter how hard he tries to keep his distance from the dispute.

Nando is aware that world sugar prices are soaring. A sugar plantation with no links to the presidency would want to expand operations at this time, but Nando can see the unflattering headlines: “Luisita wants more land.”

Instead he’s currently exploring the commercial possibilities of organic vegetable farming within existing land. He’s also experimenting with crossing tomatoes with eggplants (the result looks and tastes like a tomato).

You know a guy is in trouble when he moves around with a lawyer, a spokesman and a publicist in tow. Being the first cousin of the President of the republic, whose government, through the solicitor general, is opposing the SDO, requires Nando Cojuangco to be extra careful with every word he says.

By now many people are aware of the hacienda’s history. During the last election campaign, Cojuangco’s interview with The New York Times painted a clan that was unwilling to give up the sugar plantation for land distribution to tenants. It was one of the low points of the Aquino campaign.

Cojuangco and his companions point out that even identifying legitimate tenants in a mechanized sugar plantation can be tricky. Complicating the situation is the question of whether tenancy can be passed on to children.

Like the owners of the hacienda, families have lived and worked for generations in the plantation that was originally owned by Spaniards.

Two children were among the 14 who were killed when government forces broke up a labor protest at the hacienda on Nov. 16, 2004.

The next year, when Cory Aquino joined those who were demanding the resignation of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo as president over the “Hello, Garci” vote rigging scandal, the government challenged the validity of the stock distribution option.

The last time an Aquino became president, Hacienda Luisita was placed under land reform. The estate survived that one with its sugar lands intact. Now another Aquino is at the nation’s helm.

Yesterday, P-Noy said the Aug. 23 hostage crisis would not define his presidency.

Perhaps not. But the fate of Hacienda Luisita could.