The Hacienda Luisita agrarian dispute case will be treated like any other pending before the Supreme Court (SC), a court official said on Wednesday.

Court Administrator and SC Spokesman Jose Midas Marquez said the High Court will not give preferential treatment to the long-standing dispute between the family of President-elect Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III and farmer-beneficiaries of the more than 5,000-hectare sugar land.

“Of course, it will not receive any special treatment. It will proceed like any other case proceeds,” Marquez said.

Marquez was reacting to the request of various farmers’ groups urging newly installed Chief Justice Renato C. Corona to act with dispatch and resolve the case of Hacienda Luisita in favor of agrarian reform beneficiaries.

According to Marquez, the Hacienda Luisita case has not yet been included on the agenda of the High Court.

It will be recalled that the last action of the SC in the case was in June 2006 when it issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) against the decision of the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council (PARC) to place the sugar estate under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) and have it distributed to farmer-beneficiaries.

The SC instructed PARC and then Agrarian Reform Secretary Nasser Pangandaman to refrain from distributing Luisita lands to farm worker beneficiaries. It ordered the Cojuangco-owned Hacienda Luisita Inc. (HLI) to post a cash bond of P5 million for the TRO.