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WITHOUT mincing any words, Sen. Joker Arroyo said any
moves to extend the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP)
should be stopped.
“It is finished, it has
outlived its usefulness,” Arroyo said, adding that while he has
heard of moves to extend the program beyond 2008, “I am not
agreeable to that, I will personally oppose it.”
Arroyo joins the rank of
senatorial candidates together with Tessie Aquino-Oreta who believe
that the CARP has been a failure and has not really uplifted the
lives of the people, particularly the farmer beneficiaries who have
availed of land under the program.
CARP was implemented as a social
justice tool under the administration of then President Corazon
Aquino has already been extended twice and will end in 2008. The
Department of Agrarian Reform has been lobbying for another
extension of five years in Congress.
However, Arroyo said that there
are “empirical evidences which unfortunately shows that those who
have been given land have given up their ownership and sold it back
to the landowners.”
Oreta on the other hand said
there must be a study to look into where we are in so far as the
program implementation is concerned adding that the first question
should be whether it actually benefited the farmers.
She added that if proven none,
government should find another alternative to help the farmers
through other livelihood programs that could be beneficial to them
rather than simply land distribution.
Meanwhile, even while he is
running under the administration ticket, Senator Arroyo was quick to
voice his opposition to some of the programs being pushed by the
president, particularly Charter Change and the continuing issue on
extrajudicial killings.
-- Ma. Ester L. Espina
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