The payment of P471 million to President Aquino’s family by the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) is tantamount to “brazen” fraud and plunder, the peasant group Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) today said.

The KMP demands that the money be returned to the government and that the Cojuangcos pay the “billion-peso debt they owe to the farmworkers of Hacienda Luisita” instead.

The farmers issued the statement after a report quoted Anthony Parungao, DAR undersecretary for legal affairs, that the payment has been made to Hacienda Luisita Inc. (HLI) and reported to the Supreme Court in October last year.

Hacienda Luisita is at the center of a still raging agrarian dispute, as the Cojuangco’s Tarlac Development Corporation (Tadeco) continues to bulldoze and claim lands already occupied by farmworker beneficiaries.

“P471 million of taxpayer’s money was used to pay the Cojuangcos for the land while, at the same time, the President’s family still controls and are continuously fencing vast tracts of lands inside Hacienda Luisita,” said KMP chairperson Rafael Mariano.

 Aside from bulldozing and fencing activities by Tadeco in 400 hectares in the villages of Cutcut and Balete, the Cojuangcos are still exercising control over the sprawling estate through the “arriendo system” or leasing of lands from farmers using “dummies.”

One such dummy pinpointed by the farmers is presidential appointee former Land Transportation Office chief Virginia Torres, a shooting buddy of President Aquino.

Mariano added that a development plan called Luisita Industrial Park III also demonstrates that “the President’s family will never let go of Luisita.”

The third phase of the Luisita development plan allegedly consists of a 260-hectare industrial city with residential, recreational, industrial, and commercial uses.

The KMP further said that the multi-million peso payment to the Cojuangcos show how President Aquino’s family has made a milking cow out of the “bogus” Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP).

Last Wednesday, the farmers protested inside the House of Representatives during the hearing of a proposal to extend CARP for another five years. The farmers were forcibly dispersed by guards.

The peasant group demanded that President Aquino and his relatives return the P417 million to the nation’s coffers. It also called on HLI to immediately heed by the SC decision to pay the farmworkers P1.33 billion for the “illegal” sale of almost 300 hectares for the Luisita Industrial Park and Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway or SCTEX road network.