By TONY LOPEZ
IT is the defining moment of the Aquino presidency that the scion of a clan responsible for the economic enslavement and financial penury of up to 6,000 families for more than half a century is now waging the biggest war ever against corruption in government.
Through sheer determination and political will, President Benigno Simeon Cojuangco Aquino III had his predecessor, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, under a hospital arrest (for electoral fraud), and her former subaltern, Chief Justice Renato C. Corona, facing impeachment trial before the Senate, acting as a tribunal, (for corruption, basically).
Noynoy Aquino’s Cojuangco family owns the 6,435-hectare Hacienda Luisita, the sugar plantation and sugar mill they bought using a 1957 government loan which was granted on condition that the Cojuangcos would subdivide the estate within ten years and give the land to their tenants. The 10th year was 1967. It is now 2012, a lapse of 55 years. In 2011, the Supreme Court, headed by Corona, voted unanimously and ordered the hacienda’s distribution to the Luisita farmers (workers).
Please note that corruption is not just about stealing taxpayers money from government coffers. An even more pernicious form of corruption is abuse of power.
I used to think incompetence is also a form ofcorruption but our people have an incredible tolerance for incompetence. A number of incompetent publicofficials, past and present, are enshrined in the hearts and minds of our people—for being saints, idols,icons, and as champions of values like goodness, freedom, and democracy.
I insist though that an incompetent president and a corrupt president do the same damage to the economy and to our country. And oftentimes, for the good of the people, a corrupt president is the lesser evil. A corrupt president will undertake a critical infra project because he or she can collect a commission.
An incompetent president will not undertake such a project because he doesn’t know that the infra is needed, or he doesn’t know how to undertake it, or is simply too lazy to undertake it.
In the case of the corrupt president who, for example collected a 30 percent commission, the people benefited from the 70 percent portion cost of the infra project. In the case of the incompetent president who did not undertake the project, there is zero impact on the people of such a forgone or aborted project. Therefore, one can conclude that the effect of an incompetent president is 100 percent bad while the effect of a corrupt president is 70 percent good.
Abuse of power is using one’s position in government, whether elective or appointive, for personal, family or business advancement or aggrandizement, financial or economic enrichment, and to perpetuate an unjust or feudal system where the official’s family is dominant.
Abuse of power is betrayal of the public trust.
There are many examples of abuse of power. When you use a government car or government security men to fetch GROs at Ermita and bring them to yourofficial residence for a night of cavorting, that isabuse of power.
When you use your high position to secure discounts or gifts from a private property developer, that isabuse of power.
If you are an impeachable public official (say you are the president or the chief justice), and you do those things, the acts are not enough to impeach you or remove you from office, however. But they will raise questions about your fitness in office.
When you use the powers of the presidency to engineer the insertion of provisions in the Constitution and laws that will eventually benefit your family’s business, that is abuse of power.
The Cory Aquino 1987 Constitution has Article XIII, on Social Justice and Human Rights.
Section 3, fourth paragraph, states that: “The State shall regulate the relations between workers and employers, recognizing the right of labor to its just share in the fruits of production and the right ofenterprises to reasonable returns on investments, and to expansion and growth.”
Section 4 (Agrarian and Natural Resources Reform) states:
“The State shall, by law, undertake an agrarian reform program founded on the right of farmers and regular farm workers, who are landless, to own directly or collectively the lands they till or, in the case of other farm workers, to receive a just share of the fruits thereof.”
In 1988, Congress passed Republic Act No. 6657, otherwise known as the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law (CARL). The law became the legal basis for the implementation of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP). It was signed by President Corazon C. Aquino on June 10. It exempted from land reform haciendas that distributed shares, rather than land.
The Cojuangco family used the CARP law’s provision that enables farm “workers” (not tenants) to own shares of corporations owning haciendas like Luisita. The Cojuangcos sold shares to its “workers” on installment, payable with income from dividends ofthose shares. Unfortunately, in the last ten years, Luisita has been losing money. So instead of the Cojuangcos giving land and money to the “workers” (farmers), the farmers ended up owing the Cojuangcos money and being denied the land due them.
Fortunately, the Supreme Court has seen through the ruse and ordered that Hacienda Luisita be cut up and distributed to its 6,000 farmers. Pronto. This year.
Now, did the Cojuangcos use their political power to pass the 1987 Constitution and to get from Congress a CARP law that enabled them to distribute shares rather than land? If so, was that abuse of power? Is that corruption?
If that is corruption, is that a lesser kind of corruption than the offenses Chief Justice Corona is being accused of now before the Senate – filing misleading or inaccurate statements of assets and liabilities and networth (SALN), buying condos cheap and at a discount, and other misdemeanors?
Yet, President Aquino is the one seeking Corona’s impeachment. Noynoy is clean. Corona is dirty. Wow!
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