The coco levy funds are heating up again and the Confederation of Coconut Farmers’ Organizations is on “war footing.”
They first gathered together in Davao from 4 to 5 April; then, at Tamontaka in Maguindanao 11 to 12 April, where the significant factions and sectors of the resurgent Bangsa Moro took part. A week later it was Butuan (April 20-21), and thence Calbayog May 2-3 in the Haiyan/Yolanda-ravaged region. Lipa will be May 17- 18, Naga a week later; Tagbilaran will follow late May or early June and finally for a national gathering – the South’s Queen City of Cebu will host the national confab latter part of June.
The gardeners gathering are the provincial, regional and national leaders of the three biggest national federations that united themselves last year into one big confederation (CONFED) in a continuing effort to provide voice to the voiceless millions of the country’s primary industry – the coconut subsector.
Both the government and the oligarchy that controls it have ample and amplified voices while the majority coconut farmers are hardly heard – but for one fortunate development sometime back. A significant group of the country’s moral leaders recognized the farmers’ issues to be profound moral issues, which they could not ignore. They then formed the Bishops-Ulamas-Pastors-Priests-Farmers-and Lumads Conference better known as BUPPFALUC. It is this conference that has been quite actively gathering the leaders of CONFED together – seeking to sense the true sentiments of the coconut farmers and hoping at the end of the process for some decisive unified action.
“What is just with regard to the ownership of the coco levy funds?” This was the original moral issue. They tackled it frontally in hopes of educating the state organs of legality – the congress, the executive and specially the Judiciary to see what is just regarding the ownership of the billions upon billions of pesos that had been wrung out of the coconut farmers allegedly for their benefit and the development of the coconut industry –whether they, the farmers, liked it or not, or even whether they knew it or not – seeing as so many hardly knew that for almost a decade they had become the most highly taxed citizens in the whole history of the country.
First, the moral leaders affirmed, the precise nature of the ownership of these funds was not absolute ownership but trust ownership. Given their origins and alleged purposes, the funds must be regarded as public trust funds: “public,” not private, because they were the result of taxation; “trust” ownership not absolute ownership because they were put together for certain purposes and could not be disposed of in any which way except for the attainment of those ends or purposes.
The government could not now just do with the funds as it pleased because they did not belong to the general funds. They were special funds. Nor could the farmers claim the funds in an absolute sense of ownership to do with as they pleased because these funds that came from them were still theirs only for a given purpose. Such was the nature of trust ownership.
Secondly,amplifying on the first, BUPPFALUC taught that the precise nature of the ownership of these funds was one of dual ownership – not single absolute ownership. They did not have one owner but two. The government that collected the funds “owned” them as trustee. The government was merely “trust” owner. The real beneficial owners or “Trustors” were all the coconut farmers whose class and no other were specially taxed by the State for a given purpose.
It was most understandable then that in Davao during the first consultation the coconut farmers
categorically affirmed: “We stand by the Supreme Court decision rendered on January 24, 2012 declaring the coco levy funds as ‘owned by the government to be used only for the benefit of all coconut farmers and for the development of the coconut industry’ (GR Nos. 177857-58 and GR No. 178193 in the dispositive portion), a decision the implementation of which has remained elusive to date.”
It was nonetheless a decision that jibed one hundred percent with the moral teaching of BUPPFALUC. With the finality of the Supreme Court decision, the “legal” was now on record as following the “moral” perspective of the historic reality of the controversial funds.
Thirdly,then, and corollary to the first two above, the gardeners emphatically reiterated “what we have concluded down the years in many conferences and consultations…namely, that the two essential features characterizing the funds are best ascertained and guaranteed through the establishment of a Foundation that is both government-controlled and participated in by the elected representatives of all the coconut farmers.
“The Foundation shall be organized by law as a non-stock, non-profit for the benefit of the coconut industry and its farmers. All assets, resources, enterprises and corporations that had been funded by coco levy funds, including the 24% SMC-CIIF Series I preferred Shares registered in the names of the 14 CIIF Holding Companies as well as all the dividends accruing thereto, shall be controlled by this Foundation through its nominees to the various Boards, or, absent such Boards, through the appointed Managers. Likewise we urge His Excellency President Benigno Simeon C. Aquino III to order the PCGG to immediately return to the CIIF the 1% arbitral fee which was disapproved by the Sandiganbayan, now amounting to PhP4.4 billion, and the SMC dividends derived from the 1% of the original 31% CIIF Holding Companies’ share now amounting to Php 800 million.”
At the end of the day, this Foundation could be holding an amount in the neighbourhood of some Php150 billion pesos that can all be placed, by law, in a Coconut Industry Trust Fund under the Foundation’s direction and management.
Only the recognition of the dual ownership of the funds can guarantee that the funds will be utilized according to its purposes – the benefit of all the coconut farmers and the development of the coconut industry. If and when developed wisely, it is an industry whose diverse products can assure many peoples of Earth the health and environmental benefits they so badly need while ensuring for majority Filipinos the prosperity they long for without having to physically break families and put all hope of the good life in contractual work as strangers in foreign lands.
Meantime, something of immediate urgency cropped up that occasioned today’s farmers’ unrest. One of the most urgent needs of the coconut farmers is their own farmers’ bank. Coconut farmers do own with the government a bank purchased for them in 1975 by the Philippine Coconut Authority (PCA), namely, the First United Bank that was subsequently renamed the UCPB or United Coconut Planters Bank. The UCPB became big and “universal” and as such must recapitalize to meet the requirements of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP). As “Unibank” it could not become a farmers’ bank but a bank for use by the oligarchy. To the eyes of a universal bank, farmers are not bankable. Period. Nonetheless that bank, the UCPB, continue to be owned 72.2% by the coconut farmers. After the planned recapitalization, the 72.2% may dwindle to as low as 7.02 or 0.72 percent for the simple reason that farmers would not now be able to put up more capital themselves. Hence, their new demands now.
In one consultation after another, the coconut farmers are demanding that “that the government acquire or install, purchase or in any other way establish for the coconut farmers their own farmers bank with a Board of Trustees composed of representatives from government and the farmers themselves and run by professionals to meet the farmers financial needs. Furthermore, we demand that the proceeds of the government sale of the farmers’ share in UCPB be immediately deposited to the farmers’ bank/financial institution. The new farmers’ bank shall serve as administrator of the coco levy funds and assets.”
The UCPB should immediately organize a TWG or Technical Working Group to tackle the details of organizing such a farmers’ bank. They must not start opening the bids for recapitalization until the farmers’ bank is safely in place. Otherwise the farmers will gain every moral right to go out of the normal rules of conduct if they are pushed into an all-out protest mode. And everybody knows that nothing is easier to destabilize than a bank. The farmers’ latest demand would actually be a good push for the proverbial “win-win” situation.
In addition, the farmers newly demand:
That the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) immediately stop deducting Php 33-million yearly from the coco levy funds deposited in escrow with the Bureau of the Treasury in violation of a Supreme Court order that those funds be deposited with UCPB, the DBP and the Land Bank;
That the PCGG discontinue holding on to an arbitration fee of 1% from the original 31% CIIF- SMC Shares because, anyway, the settlement between the UCPB and SMC were already declared illegal the Court a long time ago;
That the Philippine Coconut Authority (PCA) initiates the unification of all coconut farmers and other stakeholders in the coconut industry;
That the so-called Presidential task force on coco levy funds led by Sec. Joel Rocamora be immediately abolished and the National Anti-Poverty Commission (NAPC) be stopped from claiming billions of coco levy fund monies for monitoring the where’s and wherefores of those funds;
That the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) through Sec. Florencio Abad, and the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) through Sec. Dinky Soliman be prohibited from utilizing the coco levy funds;
That the government, pursuant to the Supreme Court decision dated May 7, 2004, and reiterated on January 24th 2012 use and utilize the coco levy funds only for the benefit of all coconut farmers and for the development of the coconut industry; and
That genuine dialogue be immediately initiated between the President and the stakeholders under the auspices of the BUPPFALUC.