Aquino’s Family Plantation Will Be Given to Farm Workers

Philippine President Corazon Aquino said Friday her wealthy family’s 14,650-acre sugar plantation, Hacienda Luisita, will be turned over to the government for parceling out to farm workers under her land reform program.

“The executive is doing its part to make the dream of land for the tiller come true,” Aquino said in a nationally televised speech. “I remain firm in my conviction that agrarian reform is the key to lasting peace and progress in our country.”

Aquino made the address shortly before a march on the presidential palace by about 10,000 farmers, drawing charges that she was mounting a deceptive scheme to protect her family’s plantation from land reform.

Aquino said her family will meet a Feb. 8 deadline for registering its plantation for redistribution under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program, known as CARP.

“I will be the first to admit that my pronouncement on agrarian reform would sound hollow if I cannot get Luisita to come under the coverage of CARP. And so I would like to reiterate that the Tarlac Development Corp., the owner of Hacienda Luisita, expresses its readiness to place the hacienda . . . under the operation of CARP,” she said.