Is the enactment of the law extending the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program?the CARPer, for CARP Extension with Reforms?a ?death sentence? for the country?s millions of farmers? That?s what the militant left thinks. Anakpawis party-list Rep. Rafael Mariano reflected that point of view with the forceful statement he issued after President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo signed Republic Act 9700 into law last Friday. We think, however, that Mariano and other vocal critics are only half-right?and therefore entirely wrong in opposing the reform measure.

?No agrarian reform law in the past has given landlords such power to identify farmer-beneficiaries,? Mariano pointed out. He?s right, up to a point. There are, indeed, pro-landlord provisions in the new law. Aside from the attestation requirement for prospective beneficiaries, such provisions as those concerning just compensation favor landowners.

But in our view, none of these provisions are law-killers. The new law incorporates several reforms which bode well for the extension of the program. The most important provision, however, is not a reform at all, but something fundamental that was central to the agrarian reform law passed in 1988.

CARPer incorporates compulsory acquisition, despite the well-organized attempt from landed legislators or their allies to force that particular mode off the table. Without compulsory acquisition, a land reform program is essentially inutile. CARPer restores this mode of acquisition to its principal role?and allocates P150 billion over the next five years to fund it.

Mandating it in the law is one thing; implementing it is completely another, especially in view of the pro-landlord provisions included in the new law. But all legislation is an exercise in compromise; citizens only hope that the compromises made, the trade-offs, are reasonable.

The reforms in RA 9700 include provisions on the sourcing of the funds, which will allow the Department of Agrarian Reform to target the acquisition and distribution of the remaining 1 million hectares or so of agricultural lands covered by CARP at a much faster pace; the creation of a joint Congressional Oversight Committee on Agrarian Reform, or COCAR, to closely monitor the implementation of the new law; the strengthening of the ban on land-use conversion by landowners eager to avoid CARP, by extending the scope of the ban to allow no exceptions, by levying heavier penalties for illegal conversion of agricultural land into non-agricultural use and by mandating the automatic coverage of converted land if the conversion is unimplemented or its terms violated?thus legislating the lesson from the Sumilao farmers? issue.

The law features many more reforms, including: the end of the mode of voluntary land transfer, which was abused in the past to favor landowners; the implementation of the principle of actual and physical possession, when it comes to the award of land, thus avoiding non-distributive schemes like Stock-Distribution Options; and the dramatic shortening of the period for installing farmer-beneficiaries, through such measures as the inclusion of the standing crop in computing the just-compensation estimate?thus legislating the lesson from the Hacienda Malaga case.

As this reference to the Sumilao and Malaga cases indicates, CARPer used the complex legislation process to successfully include in the new law pro-farmer provisions that were at the heart of landmark agrarian reform cases decided by the judiciary or by quasi-judicial bodies. Indeed, it cannot be said that the legislators behind RA 9700 were content merely to extend CARP by a further five years; they pushed to incorporate into the law the lessons from CARP?s first 20 years.

It remains an imperfect law?like all other laws passed by any legislature, in any part of the world. But RA 9700 contains enough new reform measures, and backs the principle of compulsory land acquisition with more money for agrarian reform on a per-year basis than CARP has ever seen, that it seems only reasonable for all citizens to give it a real, fighting chance.