President Rodrigo Duterte has slammed the Aquino family anew for excluding the Cojuangco-owned Hacienda Luisita in the government’s land reform program, calling it the initiative’s “greatest aberration.”
“The greatest aberration in land reform, was the whole of the country [was placed in a] land reform program area. But they removed Doña Luisita,” Duterte said on Tuesday night.
The President made the statement at the central office of the Department of Agrarian Reform in Quezon City as the government distributed 112 hectares of Hacienda Luisita to over 100 farmers that were not covered by the previous administration.
He also expressed dismay at the November 2004 massacre in which seven farmers were killed near the gate of the Tarlac hacienda after a violent dispersal. Hundreds of people were also injured, including women and children.
“Far and in between the years that it was fighting—I mean the tenants—many people died. A lot of people died, invested blood just to realize until late today the land was theirs,” he added.
This is not the first time that the Chief Executive has called out the late President Corazon Aquino for excluding her family’s sugar plantation in Tarlac in the government’s Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program.
Duterte also recently took a jab at Aquino, saying she was only popular “for losing the husband in the hands of Mr. Marcos.”
But in his recent speech, the President had said that he had “nothing against the Aquino family” and said that the Dutertes even supported Corazon during her term as president.
“I’d like to put it in record, that for the first two Aquino presidents, we supported, our family in Davao because we believed in Corazon Aquino,” he said, referring to Corazon and his predecessor, Benigno Simeon.
Aquino made the CARP the centerpiece of her administration’s legislative agenda, but she has been criticized for Hacienda Luisita’s Stock Distribution Option.
The option, which has been in place since 1989, allowed Hacienda Luisita Inc. to distribute shares in the corporation to farmers instead of land.