‘Jurassic promise’ from a landlord

Manila, Philippines—The leaders and activists of Anakpawis party list and Pambansang Lakas ng Kilusang Mamamalakaya ng Pilipinas (Pamalakaya) find hollow the vow of the present administration to do the full implementation of land reform by  the end of President Aquino’s term. It is a “Jurassic promise from a despotic landlord.”

President Aquino and his land reform apologists in Malacañang are merely engaged in red carpet propaganda for the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program Extension with Reform (Carper), which is nothing but a land reform program for big landlords and a grand obstruction to agrarian justice in the country.

Instead of engaging in propaganda, the President and his agrarian reform officials should declare Carper a dismal, comprehensive failure. It is bound to fail its intended farmer-beneficiaries because fatal loopholes and major legal defects were reincorporated in Carper to evade the distribution of vast hectares of private lands to landless farmers and tillers. The Department of Agrarian Reform should recommend the repeal of the 2009 Carper law.

According to DAR’s latest report on acquisition and distribution, it has a total backlog of over 1 million hectares of agricultural lands. In 2011, it admitted that it only accomplished 54.6 percent of its national land acquisition and distribution target. In the same report, it said that in 2011, the DAR only managed to distribute 1,798 hectares in Negros Occidental. At the rate it is doing its work, the agency has to work 20 times faster its current pace to meet its targets.

The DAR is supposed to finish the distribution of 1.3 million hectares of land to landless farmers. But up to now it has managed to distribute a little over 200,000 hectares only. The 1 million hectares of lands which DAR failed to distribute under the Carper law is an understatement. Groups are saying the figure does not include private lands currently locked in legal disputes and those acquired by big landlords via land-grabbing and other forms of coercive and violent means. Among those which are not included in the 1 million hectares of lands that DAR has yet to distribute are thousands of hectares the government has appropriated for national projects, such as the 12,000-hectare agricultural and forest lands in Casiguran, Quezon, in favor of Aurora Pacific Economic Zone and Free Port Project.

The glaring failure of Carper is DAR’s inaction on the 8,650-hectare Hacienda Looc in Nasugbu, Batangas, the 7,100-hectare prime land in Hacienda Yulo in Canlubang, Laguna, and the 30,000-hectare haciendas in Negros belonging to business tycoon Eduardo “Danding” Cojuangco Jr.

It is about time to sentence Carper to death and replace it with a no-nonsense land reform program that will truly address the long-running agrarian injustice and nightmare in our country.

—FERNANDO HICAP, vice chair,

Anakpawis party list; SALVADOR

FRANCE, vice chair, Pamalakaya,

56th K-9th St.,

West Kamias, Quezon City