THE EMERGENCE of Sen. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III as the galloping front runner in the 2010 presidential race has directed national attention back to Hacienda Luisita. The large estate, at over 6,000 hectares often described as the second biggest contiguous family-owned property in the country, is owned in large part by the extended family of the late President Corazon Cojuangco Aquino. An over-clever interpretation of agrarian reform 20 years ago created a hybrid enterprise which allowed farmers to own 33 percent of Hacienda Luisita Inc. (HLI) through the so-called stock distribution option. (Some 33 Cojuangco heirs own the rest.) In other words, the farmer-beneficiaries received stock certificates, not land titles. (This mode of land acquisition has since been disallowed under the CARP extension law, or Carper.)

In 2004, labor disputes combined with agrarian unrest to form a combustible mix in Luisita: a police dispersal operation ignited the mix, killing seven farmers. In 2006, the Presidential Agrarian Reform Committee revoked the SDO, citing unmet conditions and blatant violations. Elevating the case to the Supreme Court, the estate’s management won a writ of preliminary injunction, putting the revocation of the SDO—and more to the point, the redistribution of land the Department of Agrarian Reform was ready to effect—on hold.

This much is clear:

Luisita is not only a legal case, an agricultural concern or a social justice test; it is a highly political issue. The Arroyo administration has come in rather late to the resurrected controversy, but its plan of attack is obvious. Gary Olivar, who speaks for President Macapagal-Arroyo on ostensibly economic matters, reduced the case, which is pending before the high court, into a PR opportunity for Aquino. “This gives him a chance to clear his name and avoid being a pirouette [sic] in the court of public opinion,” Olivar said.

The militant left, which has struck a political alliance with Sen. Manuel Villar, one of the country’s biggest real estate magnates, took up the Luisita farmers’ cause many years ago. But when Rep. Satur Ocampo, a guest senatorial candidate of the Nacionalista Party, says, “Logic dictates that the farmers will press this issue because now, more than ever, a fair and just solution to the problem is possible with the DAR’s decision to junk the stock distribution option between the farm workers and the Cojuangco family,” he inadvertently reveals that in fact it is precisely Aquino’s candidacy that has given new life to the case. The “logic” he is referring to is electoral in nature.

The point is: Aquino and his family should not waste time pleading with critics or with agrarian reform advocates not to politicize the issue. By itself, it is already political. They must deal with it.

This much, too, has become clear: The parties involved have all taken steps that complicate any possible resolution. HLI’s decision to register new tillers has riled both the unions and DAR; but the “bungkalan” or cultivation system many farmers have resorted to to make ends meet since the strike of 2004 has worried HLI.

The young Aquino, who is reported to own only 1.1 percent of the Cojuangco’s holding company (and thus less than one percent of the estate itself), is now presented with a dilemma: To keep faith with his ancestors and fight the Arroyo administration’s proposed redistribution of the land, or to convince his relatives to withdraw their suit and facilitate the redistribution.

It seems he himself thinks there is a middle way. “From 1958 to 2004, residents and workers had jobs. From 2004 to 2009, they had no jobs. My focus is how to get them back to their jobs, how to get them jobs,” he said last week. If we link this to an earlier statement of his, that the family was thinking of letting go of Luisita because of the large debts it had incurred, it is possible that he—as presidential candidate, not as minority stockholder—is considering selling the estate to another large landowner, or a major business concern. This, however, will only seem to solve the problem.

The spirit of agrarian reform dictates that those entitled should own the land they till.