Let us all pray for a peaceful solution to the conflict at Hacienda Velez-Malaga in La Castellana, Fr. Rolex Nueva, social action director of the Diocese of Kabankalan, said yesterday.

The Diocese of Kabankalan has been trying to get two farmers groups at Velez-Malaga to talk, and on Saturday, Bishop Patricio Buzon visited those who are Task Force Mapalad members on hunger strike at the DAR office in Quezon City.

But Lani Factor, a TFM official, yesterday said their group is rejecting the bishop's call for a dialog among the farmers.

It is Velez-Malaga landowner Roberto Cuenca and Agrarian Reform Secretary Nasser Pangandaman who need to be mediated into talks to install the farmer-beneficiaries in Hacienda Velez Malaga, she said. The TFM, in a statement yesterday, also said that was the position taken by Gregorio Paclibar, 57, president of the Hacienda Velez-Malaga Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries Organization, after Buzon offered to mediate talks between them and the farm workers of Cuenca.

"The case in Hacienda Velez-Malaga is simply enforcement of the rule of law. All legal and moral issues are already settled. The problem is Pangandaman's lack of political will to install and Cuenca's continuing resistance," Paclibar said.

He claimed the attempt to mediate between the TFM and Cuenca's farm workers was a tactic of Cuenca and Pangandaman to divert public attention from the real issue - installation of the TFM farmer-beneficiaries.

"We do not doubt the sincerity and concern of Bishop Buzon, and we are thankful for his effort to come to us and offer help, but talks with Cuenca's farm workers would only lend credence to what Cuenca and Pangandaman are trying to project - that the problem is rivalry between two groups of claimants," he said.

One hundred-two members of TFM are demanding that the DAR install them on the property, but 178 workers of the Hacienda Malaga Guenca Multi-Purpose Cooperative are opposing the move.

The cooperative members claim that they are original tillers and not all the TFM members are workers of the farm yet they were given the prime areas of the land.

We are asking that those who are not the initial tillers of the land be removed from the list of the beneficiaries, cooperative vice chairman Romeo Caram said earlier.

Pangandaman said on Friday there are no more legal impediments to the installation of the farmer beneficiaries in Hacienda Velez-Malaga, their Certificate of Land Ownership Awards have not been cancelled.

"We just want to make sure no violence breaks out between opposing farmers groups, he said.

But Paclibar slammed Pangandaman for saying that the problem in Velez-Malaga was a conflict between two groups of beneficiaries.

He said that the farm workers of Cuenca cannot claim to be rightful beneficiaries because in the first place they had refused the opportunity to become farmer-beneficiaries and did not join the process of selection of potential beneficiaries.

When the CLOA was issued and awarded to us by DAR in 2002, they also did not protest, he added.

"But after the Supreme Court's dismissal of Cuenca's CARP annulment case became final in March 2005, Cuenca prompted his farm workers to file an exclusion-inclusion petition against us. They began to claim that they are the rightful beneficiaries, but in fact they are just being manipulated by Cuenca."

Cuenca has denied that he is opposed to subjecting his land to CARP. "I am not opposing land reform which is mandated by law, I only want to make sure that the rightful beneficiaries of the land get their just share," he said. Paclibar said it is untrue that only 57 of the 122 TFM CLOA holders are legitimate farmer-beneficiaries, as claimed by Cuenca's farm-workers.

"That is what they claim in the exclusion-inclusion petitions which they filed in October and November 2005. DAR gave them enough time to substantiate their claim. They had more than one year to prove we were illegitimate, but they failed, so DAR dismissed their exclusion petition last February 12," he said.

He alleged that Cuenca's plan in pushing for the claim of his farm workers is to remain in full control of his whole landholding.

"If the land is awarded to his farm workers through their cooperative, he would push for a corporative scheme similar to that of businessman Eduardo Cojuangco. The land will not be actually distributed to the farm workers. They will just remain wage earners," he said.

Caram, however, said that the members of the coop would collectively decide how they run the farm when their share of the land is given to them, and not the landowner.*CPG

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