AGRARIAN reform advocates under Task Force Mapalad (TFM) on Sunday challenged presumptive President Rodrigo R. Duterte to implement “an honest-to-goodness” Agrarian Reform Program starting with what the group describes as “untouchable” landlords in the
province of Negros.
“President Rody’s propeasant pronouncement has breathed a new life and guiding light into our unending and oftentime dark quest for social justice. The 28-year-old Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program [CARP], started by President Cory [Aquino], was killed by her son P-Noy by allowing hacienderos to still reign and enjoy the fruits of our labor,” said 64-year-old Negros farmer Jose Rodito
Angeles, TFM president.
TFM welcomes Duterte’s pro-farmer stance and is holding on to Duterte’s campaign promise to study the problem besetting the CARP.
The group was referring to Duterte’s pronouncement during a TV interview in Davao City after the May 9 election when Duterte said most of the landholdings distributed to tillers just went back to the control of landlords due to the ineffective implementation of CARP.
The presumptive President said, while he would need to “study the matter very carefully,” he would be open to an “extended land reform,” provided he would be “satisfied why it has gone that way.”
He said what the farmers could be sure of under his administration would be the availability of “money for financing” support services and farm productivity.
TFM farmers also welcomed Duterte’s pronouncement that he would “follow the pattern of
socialism” and that “he is angry at oligarchs” for getting “the fat of the land” and why “the government allowed” such greed.
“Those strong pronouncements coming from a nonelite President bring a ray of hope among us peasants. The politically and economically powerful hacienderos are among the country’s oligarchs. And if President Rody would follow the socialist path of development, that would mean more equitable distribution of income, wealth and resources by breaking up land monopolies and ending the reign of hacienderos, who counter reforms so they can continue enjoying wealth from our backs,” Angeles said.
TFM said no less than data from the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) showed the failure of the outgoing administration in implementing CARP.
The DAR data, he said, reveal there are still 700,000 hectares of agricultural landholdings nationwide that have not yet been distributed to agrarian-reform beneficiaries.
Last year the DAR, under the Aquino administration, failed to meet its target of redistributing 198,000 hectares of farms to CARP beneficiaries, with a land acquisition and distribution accomplishment of only 35,477 hectares,
or just 18 percent of the target.
TFM said CARP’s underperformance was due to the Aquino administration’s lack of political will to complete the program and the landowner-dominated Congress’s insertion of loopholes in the CARP laws that watered down the program.
While PNoy promised to extend the acquisition and distribution of landholdings under CARP, this was not carried out after House members from the Visayan bloc, who either belong to landlord clans or are allies of the landed elite, blocked the passage last year of House Bill 4296.
Angeles said, of the 700,000-hectare CARP balance, close to 20 percent, or about 135,000 hectares, are found in Negros Occidental, a major agrarian-reform bottleneck, known as the province with the most number of recalcitrant landlords.
DAR data also showed of the total 700,000-hectare CARP balance, about 12,000 landholdings nationwide with a total area of close to 127,000 hectares have not yet been issued CARP notice of coverage (NOC) or do not have valid NOCs.
Not having NOCs means the government under Aquino has not yet done any of the 27 CARP steps to have these landholdings acquired and distributed through the program.
Most of these landholdings, or about 52 percent without NOC or valid NOC, are found in the Visayas. There are still 6,367 landholdings covering 65,665 hectares in the region still “untouched,” because these don’t have NOC or valid NOC, according to data from the DAR.