Agrarian Reform: Doomed from the Start

The agrarian reform program or CARP as it is now known is being laid to rest as government marks its 15^th anniversary on June 10. “It was doomed from the start,” Guillermo Baretta, chair of the National Federation of Sugar Workers (NFSW)-Negros, said.

By Karl G.Ombion
Bulatlat.com/Cobra-Ans

BACOLOD CITY - Agrarian reform used to be government’s centerpiece program and to emphasize this point then President Corazon C. Aquino signed into law the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law (CARL) or RA 6657 in 1988, two years after she took power following the fall of the Marcos dictatorship.

Today, the agrarian reform program or CARP as it is now known is being laid to rest as government marks its 15^th anniversary on June 10. “It was doomed from the start,” Guillermo Baretta, chair of the National Federation of Sugar Workers (NFSW)-Negros, said.

Photo by Karl G. Ombion

Late last week, farm workers and peasants from NFSW-Negros and Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP)-Negros camped out and held pickets outside the offices of the Departments of Agrarian Reform (DAR) and of Labor and Employment (DoLE) in this city.

The camps-out and pickets are part of the build-up to the nationwide protest actions set to be staged by militant groups led by  the KMP and its allied organizations on June 10.

Opening salvo

The June 10 nationwide protest is also the opening salvo of an anti-feudal campaign to be waged by the peasants and farm workers, Baretta, who is also the secretary-general of Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU)-Negros, said in a statement.

“It is fitting that waves of protest greet the anniversary of a law that has not only failed to live up to its promise but has been further emasculated and distorted, turned into one more instrument for the continuing oppression and exploitation of the landless peasants and farm workers instead of their emancipation,” the NFSW leader said.

Baretta said CARL “was doomed from the start,” when President Aquino decreed that she was leaving it to a Congress, “whose members came from the same class as she  was - the landed elite and big businessmen - to craft a new land reform law.”

The law, Aquino boasted, would correct generations of injustice and inequity that was the root of the grinding poverty and social strife plaguing the vast majority of the Philippine society.”

They added that succeeding administrations, including that of present President Macapagal-Arroyo, “have further emasculated the law through exemptions, conversions, and various machinations like the corporate and leaseback schemes.”

Reactionary landlords

The NFSW leader added that “reactionary landlords,” whom they accused of being in cahoots with the police and military and some “paid lapdogs in local governments and even judiciary” have also subverted the law “through legal maneuvers and outright physical assaults by goons on defenseless land reform beneficiaries.”

“While we recognize the many sincere and dedicated personnel within the DAR, the agency itself has been inutile in implementing the law, mainly because it has been prevented by government from doing so, also because of corrupt, incompetent or insincere leaders,” Baretta’s statement added.

NFSW also slammed the “opportunistic pseudo-people’s and non-government organizations” whom they accused of “raking in huge profits in the form of  aid from misled funding organizations here and abroad by preying on the growing discontent of peasants and farm workers, prodding them into recklessly endangering themselves, often in violent clashes with landlords’ goons or, worse, with equally disfranchised farmers and laborers.”

“All these have conspired to keep the landless tillers, whose blood, sweat and tears continue to enrich the despotic and greedy landlords who lord it over them, from achieving their dreams of finally owning the soil they labor on,” the NFSW added.

The NFSW revealed that in most haciendas, farmworkers are increasingly removed from regular employment and relegated to doing “pakyaw” work, earning average daily wages of only between P50 to P70, sometimes less, and forcing whole families, including children who should be in school, to work in the fields to maximize their meager earning capacity.

Hunger strike

In a related incident, agrarian reform beneficiaries from the controversial properties in Negros Occidental declared an indefinite hunger strike outside the DAR national office in Quezon City.

 “We thought the State through DAR would uphold our rights to our land amid resistant landlords,” said 34-year-old Jonathan Promete, farmer leader of the Task Force Mapalad (TFM) peasant organization. “In the end, it is (DAR Secretary Robert) Pagdanganan himself who turns his back on us, as we continue to be harassed, driven away, and killed in our own lands.”

The hunger strikers are Certificate of Land Ownership Award (CLOA) holders in Negros landholdings under CARP, but could not enter their properties or expand their claim to their lands due to stiff resistance of big landlords such as Eduardo “Danding”

Cojuangco, Kitchie Benedicto Paulino, Roberto Cuenca, Mario Villanueva, Antonio Lopez, the Lizares-Lopez Development Corporation, Julius Gustilo, Elsa Medado, and Farley Gustilo.

Violence

Agrarian-related violence has escalated in Negros island as Pagdanganan, militant farmer leaders said, continues to skirt from the main problem of landlord resistance to land reform. Some of the documented cases include the killing of three farmer-beneficiaries by goons of former landowners; shooting and mauling of 11 farmers; eviction of 22 farmers, based on court decisions favoring landlords; arrest and detention of eight beneficiaries; 600 farmers facing 35 criminal and civil complaints before regular courts; 6,000 farm workers supporting CARP dismissed from jobs; 39,000 jobless and landless farm workers and families facing hunger this off-harvest season; and 500 school-age children of CLOA holders barred from going to school.

Meanwhile, the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army, through its Negros Island leader Fr. Frank Fernandez, called for the launching of massive protest actions island-wide on June 10.

Fernandez said the people should link arms to destroy “feudalism” in the countryside and “in its ashes bring about genuine agrarian reform.”

In a tape-recorded statement in Ilonggo made available to the Negros media community, the CPP cadre said the Party recognizes the farmers’ right to launch legal protest actions to further genuine land reform.

“The farmers also have the right to carry out armed struggle which is getting stronger through the New People’s Army, which is their instrument to effect revolutionary agrarian reform in the countryside,” he said. Bulatlat.com

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