IF it was to be rated for its performance in terms of land distribution, the first three years of the Duterte administration will get the “F” mark.
According to the group Task Force Mapalad (TFM), despite President Duterte’s “unwavering” pro-Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program pronouncements, a close look at the Department of Agrarian Reform’s (DAR) own data will reveal that of the six administrations that implemented agrarian reform since 1988, the Duterte administration had the lowest accomplishment in CARP history.
On Tuesday, thousands of farmers held a picket in front of the DAR office in Bacolod City to call on the President to fulfill his promises.
“You’ve never changed your promises, Mr. President. Before and after you won the 2016 elections, you never stopped assuring and inspiring us that you would implement CARP and complete the program’s land distribution phase, Teresita Tarlac, president of the Negros-Panay Chapter of TFM said in a news statement.
“But what also didn’t change or even got worse, despite your pro-peasant vows, was the DAR’s land acquisition and distribution performance. The agency’s dismal LAD record made your administration the slowest of all the administrations that implemented the CARP for the last three decades,” she stressed.
Tarlac was among those who led TFM’s march to the DAR Provincial Office in Dawis, San Sebastian Street, Bacolod, on Tuesday.
The mobilization, which was held during the opening of the MassKara Festival in Bacolod, culminated in the shaving of heads of the children of peasants, who feared for their future without land.
According to TFM, from 2016 to 2018, or the first three years that the current administration implemented agrarian reform, the DAR was only able to distribute to farmer-beneficiaries a total of 91,776 hectares of agricultural landholdings nationwide, or an annual average of 30,592 hectares.
The Duterte administration’s three-year LAD performance was just 8 percent of the accomplishment of the Ramos administration in its first three years in office.
From 1992 to 1994, the DAR, under President Fidel Ramos’s watch, recorded the highest LAD accomplishment, distributing a total of 1,113,019 hectares of land to CARP beneficiaries, or an average of 371,006 hectares yearly.
The administration with the second highest LAD accomplishment was that of late former President Corazon Aquino. In its first three years of implementing Republic Act 6657, or the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law of 1988, her administration was able to distribute a total of 452,074 hectares from 1988 to 1990, or 150,691 hectares annually.
Third was the Estrada administration that distributed to CARP beneficiaries a total of 379,905 hectares from 1998 to 2000, or 126,635 hectares yearly.
It was followed by the second Aquino administration with LAD accomplishment of 320,916 hectares from 2010 to 2012, or 106,972 hectares annually, and by the Arroyo administration that distributed 313,778 hectares from 2001 to 2003, or 104,593 hectares yearly.
Meanwhile, TFM said Negros Occidental still has biggest CARP backlog in history with a LAD balance of 103,373 hectares as of end of June 2019.
This is equivalent to 20 percent of the 521,006-hectare LAD balance nationwide.
Other provinces with big LAD balance, or undistributed land, that are covered by the CARP are Leyte, with 36,161 hectares or 6.9 percent of the total national LAD balance, followed by Isabela with 32,631 hectares undistributed land or 6.3 percent of the total LAD balance nationwide. Camarines Sur, Masbate, Iloilo, Sorsogon, Albay, Capiz and Sultan Kudarat are also in the list of provinces with high LAD.
According to TFM, the frequent distribution of the Certificate of Land Ownership Award (CLOA) does not equate to high land distribution accomplishment.
TFM pointed out that while it was in the news that President Duterte and DAR officials had been frequently distributing CLOAs to farmer-beneficiaries (FB) of the CARP in areas in the Visayas and Mindanao, most of the said distributed CLOAs were not new LAD accomplishments by the current administration but were land titles subdivided from the collective CLOAs that were earlier awarded by previous administrations.
“While we appreciate the move of the DAR to issue individual CLOAs to CARP beneficiaries, we also hope that the department told the President that many of these CLOAs were part of the LAD accomplishments of past administrations and not new landholdings that were processed for acquisition and distribution to FBs by the current administration,” said Tarlac.