"Godfather" of land reform?
Joseph Estrada acclaimed the "stock-sharing scheme" executed by former Marcos crony Eduardo "Danding" Cojuangco, last October in Negros Occidental. This is "land reform", he declared. This also shows how superficial the Estrada regime�s understanding�and appraisal�of agrarian reform is.
 What Cojuangco did in Negros was not land distribution. He formed a corporation comprising 11 sugarland haciendas covering 4,361 hectares. Land value was assessed and the latter assigned an equivalent minority and minimal share in an agribusiness corporation controlled by Danding.
These properties constitute such a minuscule part of all the landholdings and business interests of their clan. The land was not even actually distributed to the peasants. The latter have no real voice, no right to decide how to run the business they hold "shares" in. They don't even have a say on the disposition of the land that supposedly already belongs to them and not to Danding
This scheme used by Danding for his grandstanding is not even a new one. It is merely a copycat of the "sharing and agricultural development model" scheme used by his cousins to deceive the farm workers of Hacienda Luisita in Tarlac.
Under the Aquino regime's sham land reform law, stock distribution is considered a form of land distribution to enable landlords to escape actual land distribution even as they pretend to affirm land reform.
In Hacienda Luisita, farmlands were integrated into a bigger agricultural, commercial and industrial corporation and assigned an assessed value equivalent to more than 33% of the shares of stock in the new corporation. Nominally, ownership of the hacienda lands were transferred to the farm workers, making them coowners of the corporation along with the likes of Jose 'Peping' Cojuangco and Corazon Aquino. But their shares were of no use. They could do nothing even as bigger and bigger portions of the hacienda were no longer used for agriculture and converted to real estate, commercial and industrial use; even as they were laid off from their jobs; and even as they were evicted from the very land they had long been living in.
Estrada hails Danding as the "Godfather of land reform". Declaring his scheme in Negros as the official model for the distribution of commercial farms lionizes Danding despite his being rabidly anti-peasant.
The stock-sharing scheme most enamored of by the president, who appears to be completely ignorant about land reform, is but part of a grand scheme by the "Godfather" to control vast areas of Mindanao and the Visayas and convert this into a political and economic bailiwick for himself and his chosen vassals�not only from the civilian bureaucracy, most likely, but also from the militarist cliques.
Other actors in this moro-moro are the former advocates of "civil society" esconced within the bureaucracy of the Department of Agrarian Reform who are now the foremost advocates of land reform ala-Danding Cojuangco. Another name that pops up now and then is that of Arturo Tabara alias Andres Nava, supposed chair of the Rebolusyonaryong Partido ng Manggagawang Pilipino and a frequent special guest of the "Padrino" in his hacienda.
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