THE Confederation of Coconut Farmers demanded Thursday that Malacañang produce the P7.6 billion in coco levy funds that it illegally took from the United Coconut Planters Bank and San Miguel Corp. without explaining where the money would be used.
Cocofed Chairman Efren Villaseñor said his group, representing about 2.8-million coconut farmers, learned recently that the Palace and the Presidential Commission on Good Government withdrew the P7.6 billion cash component of the coco levy fund last year from UCBP and SMC.
“There have been reports that P5.2 billion of the P7.6-billion have already been transferred from a special account of the Bureau of Treasury to the general fund, which Malacañang can use for any purpose it desires, including for the elections,” Villaseñor said.
He said they have already written letters since last year to the PCGG and Malacañang asking them to show the money, but no reply was ever received.
“We wanted straight answers. Where is our money? Their silence is making us worried because it might have been spent on the election. We want a reply but until now our inquiries are being ignored,” Villaseñor said.
Villaseñor said that when the Supreme Court decided in favor of the coconut farmers in 2012 with respect to the coco levy fund, it ordered the PCGG to put the whole cash component (P5.2 billion worth of SMC shares and P1.4 billion deposited at the UCPB) in a special account at UCPB, the Development Bank of the Philippines or Land Bank of the Philippines.
But he said the PCGG, through then chairman Andres Bautista, suddenly ordered that the fund be withdrawn from SMC and the UCPB and transferred straight to the Bureau of Treasury in violation of the Supreme Coourt ruling.
“They illegally transferred the money in violation of the SC’s decision that it should stay in any of those three government banks. They initially put the money in a special account in the BTR but recently we have heard that they have withdrawn most of the money from the special account [and moved them] to the general fund,” he said.
He added that putting the money in the BTR destroys the very essence of the SC decision that coco levy fund is a public fund held in trust by the government for the benefit of coconut farmers.
“Putting it in BTR and then to the general fund, the government now is the absolute owner of the fund and they can use it for any purpose they want to the prejudice of the millions of farmers who had fought for decades to recover the money,” he said.
Villaseñor said the government had long wanted to lay its hands on the coco levy fund and dispose of the assets connected to the fund through privatization.
“This is evident in two executive orders [EO Nos. 179 and 180] of President Aquino last year, which provided for the privatization of the coco levy fund assets, which is now estimated to be around P200 billion and use the proceeds for other purposes,” he said.
“We were not even consulted on the issuance of the two EOs. We were surprised because Malacañang wanted to dispose of the fund without even consulting us. It seems they have other purposes for the fund, maybe for the elections, but it is not for the coconut farmers,” he said.
This, he said, prompted the coconut farmers to seek a temporary restraining order from the SC to stop the implementation of the twin EOs for being “immoral, unconstitutional, illegal and anti-farmer.”
The Court granted their petition and a TRO had been issued, he said.
But before the TRO could be issued, the P76 billion from the UCPB had already been taken out by Bautista and transferred.
Bautista is now chairman of the Commission on Elections.
Villaseñor said even the two bills that had been filed in the Senate and the House of Representatives on the use of the coco levy fund were similar to the EOs being pushed by Malacañang.
The farmer-leader said his members did not want to privatize the assets of the coco levy fund and instead wanted to use the fund for the development of the farmers and the coconut industry.
Confed is composed of organizations comprising 90 percent of the more than 3.2-million coconut farmers in the country spread out over 63 provinces.
“Our decision is not to lay our hands on the coco levy fund and just use it for the implementation of programs for the benefit of the whole coconut industry,” Villaseñor said.
“We want to regain our old stature of being the biggest coconut exporter in Asia and we can only do that if we provide all the support for our farmers, especially teaching them new technologies on how to maximize the earning potential of the coconut from the husk to its shell down to its water and the meat,” he said.
Villaseñor added that after 40 years of struggle to get their hands on the coco levy fund and four years after they won the case, they have yet to get a single centavo from the fund.