Roperos: Coco levy comedy

Thursday, January 26, 2012

WHAT the game was about at the beginning appeared to me as a serious effort to build up capital for investment with a mass base. It was to be money generated from the coco farmers, and then utilized for setting up of various business operations managed by well- respected businessmen, and the nation’s coco farmers as investors/capitalist. In a sense, it would counter exploitation of the poor by the rich, a play against communism, too.

And thus, the coco levy program was born. Coconut was the farm product with the most number of farmer-producers in the whole country, ranging from the backyard planters to hundreds-of-hectares plantation owners. And they were all similarly treated under the coco levy program where coconut producers, whether one has barely a few dozen coconut trees or a few thousand fruit-bearing ones, were all levied percentage tax.

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I remember that my father, a public school teacher who owned a few hundred trees in his farm lots, was given tax levy receipts for every hundred kilos of copra he sold.

Later, he was issued stock certificates representing shares in corporate organization where his money from the coco levy was supposedly invested. He had kept these certificates, and up to now I do not know whether he received dividends from them or not.

When he died in mid-1986 at age 91, my two brothers and two sisters signed a sort of waiver in my favor to claim the proceeds of Cocofed collections, and from his Cocolife insurance. I remember getting some amount from the Cocofed and the Cocolife insurance.

But the stock certificates from Legaspi Oil, Southern Luzon Oil Mill, United Coconut Planters Life Assurance Corporation, United Coconut Oil Mills, Inc., San Pablo Manufacturing Corp., Granexport Manufacturing Corp. and United Coconut Planters Bank (UCPB), I still keep, completely at a loss on what to do with them.

Now that the Supreme Court has reportedly ruled that the government owned a portion of “the multi-billion peso coconut levy funds collected from farmers,” should the poor coconut farmers have a reason to glory over the decision, or should they continue to just hope they will enjoy some benefits after waiting for three decades or so?

My father, dead for the past many years now, may still be hoping that his children would be able to still enjoy what little legacy he had left them, along with his good name.

At any rate, regardless of the sad and pessimistic prognosis that Sen. Joker Arroyo gave the Supreme Court decision, I still hold high hopes that the Lord Almighty will extend justice and fair play to the country’s downtrodden farmers. And on my part, I really do hope that the observations of my former UP classmate, Joker, would not come out all too true and correct.