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The soaring rhetoric that flowed after the final passage of the
Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law (CARL) in 1988 was understandable.
It was, after all, for a country that was still laredly
agricultural, possibly, the noblest piece of legislation in a
generation, the equivalent of the US Civil Rights Act.
The nobility of the words said on that hopeful
day in 1988 largely obscured a sad fact that no one dared mention:
That this great piece of social legislation had a fundamental flaw
that essentially watered-down its landmark and trailblazing spirit.
Through some voodoo corporate ownership
structure, Hacienda Luisita was exempted from the CARL coverage. The
Senate and the House, deferring to the incumbent president which
family owned Luisita, exempted a vast, contiguous landholding of
more than 6,000 hectares—the priciest piece of farm land in the
country covering all three Tarlac congressional districts—from
distribution.
There is a mall, Wi-Fi areas, a Starbucks, a
golf course designed by Robert Trend Jones and an industrial estate
at Luisita right now–all marks of the 21st century. But its
tenants are still landless peasants as they have been for
generations. Relics from a feudal structure.
For the record, then President Cory Aquino,
reputedly ever decent, did not ask Congress to exempt the hacienda
from CARL coverage. An obsequious Congress acted on its own—and
set the tone for the ambivalence, temporizing and tentativeness that
marked the implementation of agrarian reform from 1988 to this day.
Underachieving CARL has more bark than bite
From 1988 to 2008, the CARL has been an
underachieving piece of great legislation with more bark than bite,
with more profession to social justice than real impact on improving
lives. While there are a few bright spots in the implementation,
failures and negatives have been the law’s dominant story. Such
as:
• The distribution of land, whether public or
private land, fell short of target. The updated report of the Senate
committee on agrarian reform details the underachievement in this
area, which is the heart and soul of the law.
• The implementation bred all sorts of
corruption with MAROs (municipal agrarian reform officers) and PAROs
(provincial agrarian reform officers) living the lifestyle of
customs collectors, public works engineers and BIR big shots.
Several agaw-lupa (land-grabbing) incidents in Central Luzon have
been masterminded by corrupt MAROs and PAROs.
• Where the Department of Agrarian Reform
(DAR) spent the funds, provided to support CARL, from the
multilateral institutions such as the World Bank is a big mystery.
• Too much bloodletting and violence have
attended the redistribution of hacienda lands.
Worse, the dream to build thriving and dynamic
agrarian reform communities (ARCs) with flourishing coops, viable
farm business, banks, etc. remains unfulfilled. Visions of farm
communities, happy and prosperous like those of the United States,
Western Europe, Japan, Korea and Taiwan, were the hoped-for scenario
when CARL was passed in 1988.
In short, the CARL built an entire narrative of
failure and shattered dreams. The number of farmer-beneficiaries who
sold back their certificates of land ownership (CLOs) to the
original landowners has yet to be fully documented. But by
unofficial account, the number is sizable. If not sold to the
original landowners, the lands were sold to enterprising groups that
turned entire regions of farmlands into urbanized commercial
communities, with housing estates and golf courses.
Monumental failures such as the agrarian reform
program should be immediately scuttled according to the practices of
good governance.
Nightmarish consequences of terminating CARP
The big problem with scuttling the CARP is there
is no substitute program. It is damaged goods by all accounts but
the scenarios that would emerge after terminating it describe
nightmarish consequences.
Without the legal structures and the
implementing agencies with defined mandates and powers, the quest
for true agrarian justice would be back to where it was during the
time of Pedro Abad Santos and Ka Luis Taruc.
We support Congress’s decision to extend its
life—but this time subject it to rigorous scrutiny, review and
immediate correction.
Reforms should be put in place. Corrupt DAR
people should be weeded out—and punished. The riders in the law
that have sapped it of its vitality and strength should be
expunged—with extreme prejudice.
This we believe is what the much diminished
population of ordinary farmers want to happen.
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