By David Cagahastian & Jovee Marie N. dela Cruz
Political and ideological leanings have come into play in the proposal to stop land conversions for two years, with the known militant party-list groups criticizing the economic managers for opposing the planned moratorium.
The Cabinet economic cluster, however, appears to have the upper hand, with the legal team of Cabinet Secretary Leoncio B. Evasco Jr., who is tasked to coordinate the Duterte administration’s antipoverty programs, recommending against the total ban on land-use conversion of agricultural lands proposed by the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR).
Currently, members of the Duterte administration’s economic managers continue to lobby against the proposal of Agrarian Reform Secretary Rafael V. Mariano, one of the Cabinet officials who came from the ranks of leftist groups.
Mariano said his proposal would allow the country to finally achieve food security.
Evasco’s recommendation for or against the proposed total ban is expected to carry a heavy weight, him being the Cabinet official tasked by President Duterte in his Executive Order (EO) 1 to coordinate the government’s antipoverty programs.
In the recommendation issued by Undersecretary Halmen A. Valdez of the Office of the Cabinet Assistance System, the legal team of the Office of the Cabinet Secretary opposed the DAR’s proposal for a two-year total ban on land-use conversion of agricultural lands for other purposes.
“While we support enforcement of stringent measures to preserve our agricultural lands to ensure our food security, we believe that an absolute moratorium on land conversion can pose adverse effects on other government projects,” the recommendation letter, a copy of which was obtained by the BusinessMirror, said.
“This proposal [for a total ban on land- use conversion] can be counterproductive. It might pose as hindrance to the infrastructure projects of different government agencies. The plan to make President Duterte’s term as the Golden Age of Philippine Infrastructure will be difficult to realize,” the letter said.
Earlier, National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) Director General Ernesto M. Pernia lobbied for the support of the other members of the economic team to block the Mariano-proposed EO, which will impose the two-year moratorium on land-use conversion.
But militant farmer groups, led by Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP), which used to be chaired by Mariano before he was appointed to the top post at the DAR, pointed out that the moratorium is already a done deal, with Mr. Duterte himself having approved it in a meeting of the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council (PARC) in September.
In the latest statement issued by the DAR, Mariano reiterated that PARC, which was convened for the first time in more than 10 years last month after being put in the freezer by former President Benigno S. Aquino during his term, had already approved the two-year moratorium on the conversion of agricultural lands and that an EO to put into effect such approval is in the offing.
But the legal team of the Office of the Cabinet Secretary is siding with Pernia on the issue, citing Neda’s findings that a total ban on land-use conversion of agricultural lands will worsen the housing backlog of an estimated 5.5 million houses, of which some 1.4 million is for socialized housing.
“We reiterate that absolute ban on land conversion is not the answer. We recommend that in the drafting of the proposed EO, provisions providing for exemptions will be included, particularly lands which are no longer suitable for agricultural purpose, which will be used in government projects, such as infrastructure or housing projects,” the legal team’s recommendation said.
“A mechanism may also be included to allow parties to seek exemption from the ban and a mechanism which empowers real parties in interest to question any exemption given to a party or project,” the recommendation read. Militants lawmakers, meanwhile, criticized the position of the economic managers opposing the two-year ban on land conversion.
This is after Vice President Maria Leonor G. Robredo, Budget Secretary Benjamin E. Diokno, Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III, Trade Secretary Ramon M. Lopez and Pernia submitted a position paper to Malacañang asking President Duterte not to endorse the moratorium on land conversion.
Gabriela Rep. Arlene Brosas said she’s supporting the land-conversion moratorium being espoused by the DAR as part of the Duterte administration’s program to ensure food security.
“Continuing land conversion will only benefit big real-estate businesses that led the conversion of rice fields and agricultural lands into subdivisions, resorts and golf courses. The land-conversion moratorium is right on track if, indeed, we are bent on achieving food security in the coming years,” Brosas said.
“As VP Robredo uses the homeless as an excuse, it becomes obvious that she has entirely missed the point. It was massive land conversion that has evicted millions of farmers from agricultural lands and, in the absence of livelihood, forced them to exodus into congested urban-poor communities,” Brosas added.
She said the housing projects that the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council, headed by Robredo, have been building are in partnership with real-estate developers.
“In fact, government housing projects uproot yet again poor families from their livelihood, forcing them to live in projects far from their sources of income while collecting unaffordable amortizations,” she added.
For his part, Party-list Rep. Ariel Casilao of Anakpawis said the position of economic managers runs counter to the policy direction of the DAR, which was approved by President Duterte during the PARC meeting last month.
“The Neda is actually contradicting the progressive direction of the Duterte administration. The opposition on the two-year ban on land conversion is a spoiler and a slap in the faces of poor, landless farmers, especially in areas that are threatened by various land-conversion project, approved by the Neda itself,” Casilao said.
“The Neda’s lame excuse is unacceptable and unsubstantiated, as housing projects and protection of productive agricultural lands are not contradictory, they are supposed to be congruent in serving the welfare of the poor. By clashing these two concerns, only means giving precedence to profit by real-estate developers who often take advantage of the public-private partnership schemes of the government housing
projects,” Casilao said.
For his part, Terry L. Ridon, chairman of the Presidential Commission for the Urban Poor, said: “Only large real-estate developers and multinationals stand to gain from a reversal of the President’s moratorium on the land-use conversion of agricultural lands.”
Ridon said the remedy was not to stop the issuance of a moratorium but to consider socialized housing projects as the only exception to the ban.
“Change has not come to our agricultural farmers if we will insist that food security and social justice should suffer at the whims of real-estate moguls and multinationals,” Ridon said.
Ridon added that the main problem in agrarian reform was the dizzying pace of land-use conversions for other uses to the exclusion of the poor Filipino farmer. “In the main, land- use conversions were made not for socialized housing but for the construction of provincial malls, golf courses, residential subdivisions and resorts.”