12 Sumilao farmers to meet with Cardinal Rosales
By Jerome Aning
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 23:10:00 01/16/2008
Filed Under: Agrarian Reform
MANILA, Philippines -- Exactly one month after their dialogue with President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, the farmers from Sumilao, Bukidnon, are still waiting for the government to take the first step to fulfill its promise to award them their own land.
After the farmers walked all the way from Bukidnon to Manila to dramatize their demand for agrarian reform, President Arroyo revoked the conversion order for the disputed 144-hectare Sumilao property last December 18, and put the estate back to the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program.
The farmers, members of the indigenous Higaonon tribe, were originally given titles to the property but these were recalled about 10 years ago when the landowners got from Malacañang a land-use conversion order that allowed the owners to develop the land into an agro-industrial estate. The owners, the family of Norberto Quisumbing, later sold part of the land to San Miguel Foods Inc.
The farmers are now confused about what to do next. Twelve of the 150 farmer-claimants will arrive in Manila on Thursday to seek an audience with Manila Archbishop Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales, the farmers’ coordinator, Josel Reyes, told the Philippine Daily Inquirer, parent company of INQUIRER.net.
Rosales, who once served as bishop of Bukidnon, has been one of the farmers’ most influential supporters. He has named Manila Auxiliary Bishop Broderick Pabillo to head a Church Task Force on the Sumilao Case and to monitor the farmers’ plight.
The Sumilao case is expected to be taken up by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines in its plenary assembly scheduled on January 22 to 23.
The CBCP’s regular pastoral statement may also refer to the case.
The farmers want the current owner of the land, San Miguel Foods Inc., to stop the construction of a hog farm on the property. They said the hog farm was illegal and not specified in the original conversion plan that SMFI inherited from the previous owner.
Samuel Merida, president of the Mapalad Multi-Purpose Cooperative formed by the farmer-claimants, said they have been picketing the regional office of the Department of Agrarian Reform in Cagayan de Oro since January 3, a day after the 15-day deadline for the filing of appeals.
He said the farmers were dismayed when they learned that SMFI received its copy of the President’s order only on January 2, giving the company until Thursday to file an appeal before Malacañang or to bring the matter before the courts.
Merida recalled that after their dialogue with the President, Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye promised to personally deliver the order to SMFI.
The farmers were disappointed when they learned that Bunye sent it through registered mail instead.
Agrarian Reform Secretary Nasser Pangandaman said DAR would issue a notice placing the property under the government’s agrarian reform program, upon being notified by the Office of the President about the finality of the December 18 order.
The Sumilao farmers do not understand these bureaucratic delays and see it as a sign of insincerity.
“My doubts about the sincerity of the government to fulfill its promise are being reinforced by the actions of the two Cabinet secretaries who are involved in our case. Secretary Bunye did not even care to explain why he did not fulfill his promise of personally delivering the order to SMFI. Secretary Pangandaman, meanwhile, has been sounding like the spokesman of SMFI lately,” Merida said.
Arlene Bag-ao, legal counsel of the Sumilao farmers, also said they have been lambasted in the news lately for rejecting the offer of SMFI to buy them 200 hectares of agricultural lands adjacent to the 144-hectare property. “There are no offers yet but we have read about it in the news," she protested.
“The call is for giving the farmers 200 hectares of land, a so-called ‘win-win” solution. But what happens to the farmers tilling those lands they are offering to us?" she said.
“Why should the Sumilao farmers be used to displace other landless farmers? An injustice cannot be redressed by another injustice,” she added.
Pabillo, chair of the National Secretariat for Social Action (NASSA), together with Cagayan de Oro Archbishop Antonio Ledesma, met with President Arroyo last week in Cagayan de Oro, to ask her to issue a cease and desist order that would halt the illegal construction being undertaken by the SMFI on the Sumilao land.
The two bishops said they were disappointed at the lack of action from the government.
Ledesma, chair of the central committee for the Church-led National Rural Congress, called the cause of the Sumilao farmers a test case for the government.
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