By TONY LOPEZ
On Saturday, August 25, Supreme Court Associate Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno took her oath to become the youngest post-war Chief Justice and the first woman Chief Justice of the Philippines.
President Benigno Simeon Cojuangco Aquino III announced her appointment Friday as the head of a Judiciary hobbled by low morale, allegations of slow justice and the recent ouster of Chief Justice Renato C. Corona, the first chief magistrate to be impeached.
At 52 (she was born July 2, 1960), the 24th Chief Justice will serve for 18 years or until July 2, 2030 when she reaches the mandatory retirement age of 70. Chief Justice Sereno will serve four presidents –– Aquino and the ones elected in 2016, 2022 and 2028.
The Chief Justice has vowed to reform the judiciary and assert her and the court’s independence from a power-tripping commander-in-chief.
Originally, it was thought Justice Secretary Lilia de Lima was President Aquino’s choice for chief justice. I now believe it was Associate Justice Sereno all along who was the President’s choice and no one else.
Firstly, CJ Sereno has better credentials and broader experience than de Lima. She finished economics at Ateneo, law at UP 1984, valedictorian and cum laude, and her master in law at the University of Michigan 1993.
She was a law professor at the University of the Philippines for almost 20 years. She also taught law and economics at the Philippine Judicial Academy, international trade law at The Hague Academy of International law (University of Western Australia) and Murdoch University, electronic commerce law at the AIM and international trade law at the Department of Foreign Affairs Foreign Service Institute.
Secondly, she is an insider, although a junior one. Her appointment enables Aquino to keep the time-honored tradition of having an insider for chief justice.
Finally, then Associate Justice Sereno favored using the 2006 ruling or one from a more current year than the 1989 ruling used by the Supreme Court in its April 24, 2012 decision ordering the immediate transfer of the 4,915.75-hectare Hacienda Luisita sugar plantation to its 6,296 farmers subject to payment of just compensation.
The use of 1989 valued the hacienda at just P196 million or P40,000 per hectare – the amount used by the Cojuangco family in deciding to let the farmers own just 30 percent of Hacienda Luisita, Inc. The tribunal also pegged Nov. 21, 1989 as the date of “taking” – when the Department of Agrarian Reform approved HLI’s stock option plan whereby the farmers received shares of stock rather than outright land transfer.
The High C ourt also ordered the Cojuangcos to pay or refund the farmers P1.239 billion – representing the proceeds of the sale of 300 hectares (at P2.5 million per hectare or P750 million) of HLI lands to RCBC and another 80.51 hectares (at P1 million per hectare or P80.52 million) to the Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway (SCTEx), plus cost of money since 1989 or more than double P1.2 billion.
At P2.5 million per hectare, 4,915.75 hectares would be worth P12.289 billion. That would be the just compensation for the Cojuangcos – if Sereno’s math were to be used. So instead of getting at least P1.239 billion cash from the Cojuangocs, the farmers would end up owing the family P11 billion.
Of course, the farmers need not pay that huge amount. The government—taxpayers—probably will.
Sereno voted with the unanimous April 24, 2012 decision of the Supreme Court ordering the immediate transfer of the sugar plantation to its farmers/workers.
However, Sereno favored the Cojuangco-Aquino family of President Aquino being compensated for the vast hacienda—at 5,495 hectares the largest contiguous piece of prime agricultural, industrial and commercial land 100 kms north of Manila—based on 2006 values plus interest rate.
Sereno opposed the use of 1989. She argued in her 1,822-word dissenting opinion in the April 24, 2012 SC decision: “For the Court to impose the reckoning period for the valuation of the expropriated Hacienda Luisita farmlands to its 1989 levels is an unwarranted departure from what the Philippine legal system has come to understand and accept (and continues to do so, as recently as last month) as the meaning of just compensation in agrarian reform cases since the 1988 Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law (CARL). The decision taken by the Court today (albeit pro hac vice) to pay petitioner HLI an amount based on outdated values of the expropriated lands is too confiscatory considering the years of jurisprudence built by this Court. No reasonable explanation has been offered in this case to justify such deviation from our past decisions that would lead to a virtual non-compensation for petitioner HLI’s lands.”
Presidential Spokesman Edwin Lacierda has stressed that the HLI case was closed and that the Supreme Court had already said it would not entertain any further motions to save the hacienda from coverage of the agrarian reform law.
That is true. The court won’t entertain any more petitions. The HLI case is closed as far as the Supreme Court is concerned.
But the case is very much alive – with the DAR, which must determine just what is just compensation. Is it P196 million, based on 1989 valuation or P12 billion, based on current values?
If the DAR, in its infinite wisdom decides on a higher just compensation favoring the Cojuangcos, the farmers cannot complain to the High Court. Remember what the SC had said in its concluding sentence on April 24, 2012: “No further pleadings shall be entertained in this case.”
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