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Discordant notes have been heard in recent days about the
resurrection of the agrarian reform program. At least 35 bishops and
several peasant support groups asked in May to extend it. Yet, a few
weeks later, hundreds of peasants came marching in to Manila from
Southern Tagalog, Bicol region, Central Luzon and Northern Luzon,
all jubilant over its “natural death.”
Agrarian reform is a paradox of sorts, very
liberating for countries like Japan, Taiwan and South Korea which
were once under political control by the US, its main champion in
these countries. Yet, in the Philippines, the anti-US militants are
probably the ones most vehement in seeing to its full
implementation.
Fr. Francis Lucas, pastor, development worker
and communicator, spoke on behalf of civil society during the
Philippine Development Forum held in Angeles City in end-March, and
explained why agrarian reform is pivotal.
“In the rural areas, when we speak of
opportunities, we speak of land, specifically access to land. For
rural families, land is life and life is land. Access to land leads
to a source of livelihood, an increased sense of security, an
increased level of resilience, and the opportunity to break out of
one’s poverty,” said Lucas.
He added, however, “Land means agriculture for
the rural poor, and yet investments in agriculture, specially for
the small farmers, are terribly anemic.”
The arguments for the program’s extension have
been well-explained in many venues. Yet, there was little
articulation in the media of why even some landless peasants are
asking for the “burial” of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform
Program (CARP), the 11th such program being implemented by the
Philippine government.
Said Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP)
chair and Anakpawis Rep. Rafael Mariano, “the ‘bogus CARP’
only catered to the interests of big landlords and foreign
agro-corporations to maintain monopoly and control over vast tracts
of land.”
Mariano said that “the Department of Agrarian
Reform (DAR) not only failed to account its funds for 20 years, it
also failed to account how many farmers were displaced and how much
lands were grabbed due to CARP-granted exemption, reclassification,
land-use conversion, bigay-bawi scheme, and non-land transfer
schemes like the stock distribution option, joint ventures, contract
growing and the like.”
DAR records showed that from 1979 to December
31, 2003, there were 2,885 approved applications for conversion
involving 40,485.9124 hectares of agricultural lands, while the
National Statistics Office (NSO) cited in 2002 that 827,892 hectares
of agricultural land have been converted to other uses.
Under existing law, it is illegal to convert
agricultural and irrigable land, but this is honored more in the
breach than in compliance. The government is in hot water among
peasants and development workers for allowing the conversion of
prime agricultural hectarage for non-agricultural use.
The bigay-bawi scheme, when what had been given
to the landless was later withdrawn, has also been well monitored.
IBON Foundation, an independent research group, said in one study
that by mid-2004, DENR and DAR cancelled more than 2,000
emancipation patents (EPs) and certificates of land ownership award
(CLOAs). The cancelled EPs and CLOAs covered 380,000 hectares of
land.
Mariano also commented that “House Bill
4077’s P100-billion appropriation for the five-year CARP extension
is equivalent to about two-thirds (2/3) of what CARP spent in 20
years of implementation,” making CARP extension a “milking cow
of big landlords as 60 percent of the P100-billion budget will go to
‘just compensation’, and with the notorious bigay-bawi scheme,
taxpayers’ money will only go to big landlords.”
Instead of the proposed CARP extension, Mariano
called for the approval instead of House Bill 3059 or the proposed
“Genuine Agrarian Reform Act” Anakpawis filed in the House.
Ironically, the militants’ bill has been denounced by some groups
supportive of agrarian reform as “confiscatory” and
“unconstitutional” for asserting that landlords who have
committed human rights violations like landgrabbing will not be paid
for their properties.
The Arroyo government has certified the CARP
extension bill as urgent. A progressive agrarian reform law is in
order if it were to create 10 million jobs, two millions jobs for
agriculture as projected from the development of two million
hectares of new agribusiness lands.
The government has to work fast to reverse
massive poverty. Despite high economic growth, the country’s
poverty incidence is increasing, from 30 percent to 32.9 percent
between 2003 and 2006. Of a population of 84 million in 2006, 27.6
million Filipinos fell below the poverty line this year, more than
ever before. Even with so many billions spent for it, poverty
reduction is slower in the Philippines than in Indonesia, Thailand,
Vietnam, and China, according to the World Bank. It chided the
government because “[its] quality of growth has not favored
poverty reduction.”
Failures in agrarian reform implementation
partly explain why the Philippines is facing a “perfect economic
storm” that can prompt change scenarios in the coming days.
ngamolo@manilatimes.net
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