Mariano Carrasco  AS we earlier stated, the legal left or the leftists seek changes of the oppressive or unjust  existing social order. The rightists or centrists don’t want any substantial social change—ideologically speaking. Of course, they would claim that they too are interested in the improvement of the people’s welfare, but by and large, on the superficial or cosmetic level. That’s why they are more interested in the building of projects (where politicians secretly get huge commissions), free medical and dental services, gift-giving, and come election time, in buying votes with a few hundreds of pesos which could really tempt the poor and impoverished to vote in a distorted manner. The poor are really fried in their own oil. The legal left sometimes think that building alliances with the so-called “enlightened or liberal-minded elite” helps. But the elite landlords and big business and the liberal-minded leaders will always be conscious of their own economic and political interests, and they are always extra cautious in dealing with the legal left who aspire for electoral or political positions. In the end, the “enlightened elite” would betray the left or  chose the rightist line when crucial decisions are made. It explains why Diokno, Joker Arroyo, and even Alex Padilla abandoned or split from Bayan,  KMU, KMP and Acts at the end of the Marcos dictatorship. In the ensuing People’s Power  revolution and government overhaul, the left was indeed left out. It also explains why the elite Cavitenos, led by Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo, caused the assassination of their Katipunan comrade and leader Andres Bonifacio and his brother. (Incidentally, one of Aguinaldo’s leading general was General Nicolas Capistrano, the first general to surrender to the American colonizers. Capistrano’s family is the local partner of Fil-Estate and Alliance Global in the development of of the paralyzed 320-hectare Mountain Meadows subdivision/golf course  project, 120 hectares of  which the farmers-landowners have claimed as their land and subject of the 20-year land dispute at Upper Gusa/Kamakawan, Indahag, this city.) The legal left need to be independent and independent-minded. They must not be afraid of espousing their democratic aspirations for our people for fear of being branded as “communists” or “ideological hardliners”. If they lose the elections because they don’t have resources and the electoral system is manipulated by the elite with massive vote-buying, corrupt election officials and elite-controlled mass media, then it proves the point that really elections in this kind of corrupt system is inutile, and should therefore be abandoned as a social remedy. Nothing is lost. Another mistake of the legal left is the failure to distinguish between the need for Carp or agrarian reform application, and the need to assert ownership by the native farmers of their own lands. From such confusion or failure to distinguish the legal left makes the mistake of branding the sale of lands by the native farmers as a sell-out or an unacceptable compromise. In the Upper Gusa/Kamakawan land dispute, the natives occupied and owned the lands long before the Capistranos obtained a title in 1975. As owners, it is their democratic right to decide whether to sell their lands or not at a fair price. Since the lands at Indahag or Upper Gusa has long been declared by the landlord-dominated City Council as residential, not agricultural land, an insistence on Carp or agrarian reform implementation would surely face certain defeat in the courts of law since only agricultural lands can be subjected to land reform under Carp. In fact, when our law office was approached for help by the farmers, their “DPA” leader then, had lost the agrarian case before the DAR judge. But only he, the “DPA” leader signed the Carp petition, and so the rest of the farmers could not be affected or ejected from the lands. There are others who insisted on the implementation of Carp or land reform in other land disputes nearby, and in the end, they either lost their cases or most of them decided to sell their rights at minimal costs and are now landless. In the case of Kamakawan, the farmers have remained on the land and are still tilling the land up to now and have succeeded in resisting the landgrabbing attempts by the developers who used goons and deception. As a group, it is their democratic right to decide to sell their lands at a just and fair price, and not the price given to mere “squatters.” Another mistake of the legal left occurred when they, including Bayan’s Teddy Casino, failed to support Chief Justice Renato Corona, under whose leadership, the Aquino-Cojuangco’s 6,000 hectare Hacienda Luisita was subjected to land reform and whose court declared the contractualization of PAL employees as illegal and in violation of the Labor Code. (In 2003, Gloria Arroyo, as president then had affirmed the decision of the DAR Secretary to place the blood-soaked hacienda under land reform. The Aquinos and Cojuangcos, the landlords, the Lopez-backed ABS-CBN, GMA, the Philippine Daily Inquirer, the corporate elite and the pro-landlord Senate simply conspired   to destroy Corona. Eight charges or offenses were leveled against Justice Corona, which ABS-CBN propagandized well every few minutes on tv. Almost everybody, including Teddy Casino, was swept away. In the end, they could only lamely prove one charge, the alleged non-disclosure of the Saln. The seven other charges were abandoned. Of course we now know that President Noynoy had to bribe the senators with an additional P50 million of pork barrel funds as proven by the bribe note sent by Drilon to the senators. Of course, it was a mistake for Corona to personally testify before the Senate—when he could have legally and constitutionally refused, being the head of a co-equal and independent branch of the government. The highly esteemed constitutionalist, Fr. Joaquin Bernas, S.J. himself believed that Corona could not be compelled to testify before the impeachment court. I am confident that the man and his family will be vindicated in the future history books.  (Mariano B. Carrasco is a lawyer based in Cagayan de Oro.)