The Daily Tribune
Aquino and Roxas (File Photo)
The militant Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) yesterday accused President Aquino and Interior and Local Government Secretary Mar Roxas of inventing a new form of pork barrel through a bill pending in both chambers of Congress intended to benefit both of their relatives.
The peasant group said the four bills pending before the Senate and one in the House of Representatives seeking to strengthen the sugarcane industry by creating a “Sugar Fund” to cushion the impacts of the “zero tariff” regime in the sugar industry to be implemented next year or the year 2015, will only serve to benefit the families of both Aquino and Roxas who control the sugar industry in the country.
“The main beneficiaries of the ‘Sugar Fund’ bill are sugar barons and big landlords like President Aquino’s and Roxas’ relatives,” said KMP deputy secretary general Willy Marbella.
Marbella noted “the Cojuangcos continue to control the more than 6,000-hectare Hacienda Luisita and owns Central Azucarera de Tarlac. There are more than 7,000 hectares of Hacienda Roxas in Nasugbu, Batangas were reverted to the Roxases who are also owners of the Central Azucarera de Don Pedro.” DILG Secretary Roxas belongs to the Roxas clan whose ownership of sugar plantations and mill extends to the Visayas region.
Except from the Trillanes bill, all the other bills state that the Sugar Fund will be utilized to finance sugar industry development projects that include, among others, Special Economic Zones, nuclear farms or Agro-Industrial Sugarcane Districts.
Except from the Trillanes bill, all the other bills state that the Sugar Fund will be utilized to finance sugar industry development projects that include, among others, Special Economic Zones, nuclear farms or Agro-Industrial Sugarcane Districts.
“The Sugar Fund bill will definitely fast-track the Cojuangcos plan to turn Hacienda Luisita into a special eco-zone, legitimize the illegal conversion of lands, and pave the way for the implementation of sugar block farming that would result in land-grabbing and displacement of farmworkers,” Marbella said.
“Worst, the conversion of Luisita into a special eco-zone will be funded by taxpayers’ money,” Marbella said, adding that under the bills, “the Sugar Fund will be constituted and collected from the proceeds of 15 percent of the value added tax on the sale and importation of refined sugar, and sugarcane by-products; and the total tariff collected on the importation of raw sugar, refined sugar and premix sugar.”
The KMP maintained that the bill is “another cash cow of sugar barons and a source of corruption by government officials.”
“The Sugar Fund bill is a concoction of sugar barons, big landlords and bureaucrats to further squeeze profit from farmers and farmworkers under the guise of saving the sugar industry from the onslaught of trade liberalization,” Marbella said.
“The landlord tandem of Aquino and Roxas has invented another pork barrel in the sugar industry. We call on the Filipino people to frustrate the Aquino-Roxas landlord clique plan to raid the nation’s coffers,” said the peasant leader.
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