PALAYAN City Mayor Adrianne Mae Cuevas denied on Friday involvement in the killing last week of four farmers in Nueva Ecija as Agrarian Reform Secretary Rafael Mariano ordered an investigation into the series of farmer killings in Nueva Ecija and Isabela over the past few days.
But Cuevas, through her counsel Poblador Bautista & Reyes Law Office, denied involvement in the incident as claimed by the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas.
In a letter to the Manila Standard, the law firm said the statements of KMP official Joseph Canlas, of the KMP are “false and defamatory” and cannot even suggest that the mayor was involved in the killing of four farmers inside Fort Magsaysay,
“None of these statements against our client is true. Our client is not a landgrabber, and has no involvement, directly or indirectly, in the killings,” the law firm said.
“In fact, there is nothing in the statements of Mr. Canlas which would serve as basis to implicate her in said crimes,” said the lawyers, lamenting the serious and irreparable injury to their client’s reputation.
The Manila Standard tried to contact Mayor Cuevas on Friday, using the number published on the city government’s website bit the mayor could not be reached through those numbers.
Meanwhile, Mariano on Friday ordered personnel of the Department of Agrarian Reform to probe the farmers’ deaths in Laur, Nueva Ecija on Sept. 3 and Isabela on Sept. 7 and bring to justice the perpetrators of the crime.
He tasked Undersecretary for Legal Affairs Office Luis Meinrado Pangulayan to lead the fact-finding team that would look into the two separate incidents.
Pangulayan will be assisted by LAO Assistant Secretay Elmer Distor, along with the regional director of the concerned regions, provincial agrarian reform program officers and chief legal division officials, and a farmer-representative from a recognized farmers’ organization as well as a representative from Mariano’s office.
Apart from investigating the killings, Mariano instructed the team to determine if the two incidents were agrarian-related.
The farmers — Baby Mercado, Violeta Mercado, Eligio Barbado and Gaudencio Bagalay — were shot dead in Laur, Nueva Ecija by three armed men as they were resting in their farm lots between 2 to 3 p.m. last Saturday.
Three unidentified men killed Ariel Diaz, head of the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas chapter Danggayan Dagiti Manalon, at his farm in Villa Pereda, Isabela.
Meanwhile, Mariano promised to solve a land dispute in Jaro, Iloilo City, and asked the involved farmers to “give me 15 days to answer your problems.”
“At present we are already taking actions in resolving their issues and concerns. But after seeing and hearing them air their problems, we will devote extra time to study and step-up ways to install them [to their lands] in the soonest possible time,” he said.
In a farmers’ dialogue organized by Monsignor Meliton Oso of the Jaro Archdiocesan Social Action Center, over 600 farmers appealed to Mariano to finally install them to their land after 18 years of waiting.
At least 6,690 agrarian reform beneficiaries remained uninstalled in their land despite the awarding of the certificates of land ownership award in the early 1990s. There are 358 landholdings involved covering 10,751 hectares of agricultural lands.