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The
Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) was started
in 1988 under the Cory Aquino administration. It seeks
to achieve social justice and propel countryside
development through two core programs: land acquisition
and distribution, under which the Department of Agrarian
Reform (DAR) gives land to landless farmers, and program
beneficiaries development, where farmers are provided
the necessary support services.
These
services include seeds, credit, postharvest facilities
and farm-to-market roads. Through these, CARP seeks to
raise farm productivity and the incomes of farm
households and improve their standards of living.
What
distinguishes the program from previous land-reform
programs, such as that under the Macapagal
administration in the early 1960s, is that it encourages
the participation of all stakeholders: the
farmer-beneficiaries, local government units business,
civil society organizations, and donor agencies, so
that, together, they can transform the countryside into
self-sustaining communities. The DAR gives
farmer-beneficiaries in agrarian-reform communities all
the support they need to make the land productive, and
also encourages farmers to find alternative sources of
livelihood, so that they can supplement their income
from farming.
Apart
from land distribution and delivery of support services
to farmers, the DAR is kept busy declogging its dockets
of pending agrarian cases that keep farmers from taking
over the land that should be theirs. The DAR’s
adjudicatory boards handle a significant number of
agrarian-law implementation cases dealing with
exemption, conversion and retention rights. It also
installs qualified farmer-beneficiaries to immediately
take over the land so they can earn income from it.
The
trouble is that many landowners have resisted agrarian
reform. Among them are the Arroyos of Negros and the
Cojuangcos of Hacienda Luisita in Tarlac. Because of
stiff landowner opposition, the DAR has been unable to
meet its target of distributing a minimum 100,000
hectares of private agricultural lands every year until
2008. Thus, farmers’ groups are now asking for an
extension of CARP for at least five years. But the
lawmakers who are inclined toward an extension are
having second thoughts, especially if the DAR remains a
languorous bureaucracy that takes forever to help
farmers get what’s due them. I worked on a contractual
basis for the department years back and came away from
the experience with the nagging feeling that with a
bureaucracy like this, no wonder that the Philippine
countryside hosts the longest-running armed insurgency
in Asia.
Congress
wanted CARP to be funded by the proceeds from the
recovered Marcos hidden wealth. But what do you know?
The government has been trying to get its hands on the
vaunted Marcos billions at an excruciatingly slow pace.
Result: paltry funds for CARP, and poor farmers left to
their own devices and living wretched, miserable lives.
Let’s
extend CARP, by all means, but we need to revitalize the
DAR and make it a responsive and dynamic government
agency. From my vantage point, Secretary Nasser
Pangandaman lacks the leadership necessary to make CARP
work.
Implement, not amend, Epira
Sen.
Juan Ponce Enrile recently gave heads of the Joint
Foreign Chambers (JFC) a tongue-lashing they they’re not
likely to forget, calling them “meddlers” because they
wrote Mrs. Arroyo a letter calling for the full
implementation, rather than an amendment, of the
Electric Power Industry Reform Act, or Epira.
But
Enrile’s angry outburst may have been an exercise in
futility as the JFC has even found an ally in the
Philippine Independent Power Producers Association, or
Pippa, which issued a statement on Monday echoing the
foreign businessmen’s stand that it is neither necessary
nor expedient to amend the Epira at this time.
“The
implementation of reforms mandated by the Epira has
gained tremendous momentum over the past two years,
eclipsing the laggard pace in the early years following
the law’s enactment,” according to Ernesto Pantangco,
Pippa president.
Pippa
asserts that a competitive industry structure has
already taken root, citing the successful privatization
efforts of the Power Sector Assets and Liabilities
Management Corp. (Psalm) that yielded for the government
$6.66 billion in revenues. Besides, it said, the
Wholesale Electricity Spot Market has been operational
for more than a year now, with electricity trading
taking place with transparent pricing under rules that
provide a level playing field to participants. The group
also says that the Energy Regulatory Commission has been
carrying out its functions of promulgating rules and
decisions as decreed by the Epira, thus helping steer
the power industry toward a steady transition to healthy
competition.
“With
these successes, the attainment of the declared state
policies is in the offing,” said Pantangco. “Instead of
amending Epira, the government should actively pursue
the privatization of the National Power Corp.’s [Napocor]
independent-power-producer contracts, a mandated
activity that has been unjustifiably dormant for more
than six years since 2001 when Epira was passed into
law,” he added.
The
Pippa stand is similar to that taken by the JFC, whose
members are the biggest consumers of electricity in the
country and employ more than a million Filipino workers.
Will the
Joint Congressional Power Commission treat Pippa with
the same contempt and derision as it did JFC? That
should be interesting to find out.
Strange
bedfellows
Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) president and
general manager Winston Garcia’s swagger at the recent
Meralco stockholders’ meeting sent a strong message to
the public that the Lopezes are solely to blame for high
electricity rates. Backstopping Garcia in his tirades is
the head of the GSIS legal department, Estrella Elamparo,
who seems equally undaunted by the powerful Lopez clan
and has minced no words in her denunciation of Manila
Electric Co.’s “mismanagement.” Our sources tell us that
Elamparo used to be a member of the radical League of
Filipino Students during her student days and later
wrote articles for the progressive but now defunct
Midweek magazine. But as a lawyer, Elamparo seems to
have made a clean break with her radical past. We gather
that she lawyered for the Mega Pacific consortium that
bagged the controversial Commission on Elections
computerization deal that was later shot down by the
Supreme Court for being grossly disadvantageous to the
government. The upwardly mobile lawyer seems to be right
there in the swing of things, and we’re not going to be
surprised if one day she surfaces behind the rostrum of
the Malacañang press office and begins to defend Mrs.
Arroyo from all the brickbats thrown her way. |
