Congress approves CARL’s extension
By Lira Dalangin-Fernandez, Maila Ager
INQUIRER.net
First Posted 21:40:00 12/17/2008
Filed Under: Agrarian Reform, Congress, Politics, Legislation, Laws
MANILA, Philippines—(UPDATE 6) The Philippine Congress on its last session day Wednesday passed a resolution extending the life of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law for six more months.
This after the House of Representatives approved before midnight Wednesday Joint Resolution 19, watered down at the last minute to appease opposing lawmakers.
A total of 111 House members voted for the extension of the 20-year-old law. Thirty-four cast their negative vote and one abstained.
Leftwing lawmakers walked out of the session hall before the voting began, with Bayan Muna Representative Teodoro Casiño saying: “They have killed the essence of land reform.”
At the Senate, the joint congressional resolution endorsed by Malacañang was passed on third and final reading early evening Wednesday. Fourteen senators voted for it and two abstained.
Senators Mar Roxas and Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III, scions of landed political clans in Iloilo City and Tarlac, respectively, inhibited themselves from the voting.
The approval of the resolution would allow government to continue awarding at least 116 agricultural estates or haciendas to 4,979 poor farmers. The law would have expired December 31.
The resolution would be sent to Malacañang for signing by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
But the resolution got Congress’ nod only after the law’s salient provision on compulsory land acquisition was taken out.
Albay Representative Edcel Lagman, an advocate of the extension of the CARL bill, said that the exclusion of the compulsory acquisition "dismembers the heart and soul” of the law and is a "preview of its eventual demise."
Makati Representative Teodoro Locsin called the resolution a "castrated version."
The resolution was sponsored at the House by Speaker Prospero Nograles, Majority Leader Arthur Defensor, Camarines Sur Representative Luis Villafuerte, and Cebu Representative Pablo Garcia.
Akbayan Partylist Representative Riza Hontiveros-Baraquel, who voted against the resolution, dared pro-extension lawmakers to voluntarily give up their vast landholdings.
“We have managed to obliterate an entire class. We have let our farmers down,” Honteveros said.
She said under such scheme, there would be no new lands for distribution, as it would leave the option to landowners to give up their lands.
After the House session adjourned, about a dozen farmers staged protest outside the session hall.
Manila Auxiliary Bishop Broderick Pabillo, one of the seven Catholic bishops who had joined farmers in a hunger strike, dismissed the Congress move as mere “deception” as he vowed to “continue the struggle.”
“They have practically killed the law,” he said, adding they would discuss their next moves and decide if they would bring their protest to Malacañang.
The farmers and the Catholic clergy were demanding for the passage of a pending bill giving the law a five-year lifespan.
Pabillo, who was on the third day of his hunger strike on Wednesday, dismissed claims that the six-month extension would be used as time for the two chambers of Congress to study the bill for its extension.
He pointed out that this was the same reason given when CARL got a six-month extension in June.
“What did they do during that time? We doubt if they will study it (during a new six-month extension). It seems as if the farmers' cause is not in the lawmakers' hearts,” he said earlier in a press conference outside the House where he and other farmers have been staying.
According to figures from the Department of Agrarian Reform, at least 1.1 million hectares or 20 percent of all lands subject to agrarian reform have yet to be distributed.
Of the 1.1 million hectares, some 700,000 hectares already have notice of coverage, covering 478 notices.
But at the upper chamber, Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile said the joint resolution was only an “expedient measure to address the immediately expiring law so that we will have that window of six months to restudy the program.”
Enrile said that if there would be a need again to extend it further after June next year, “then we can adopt the same process at that point in time.”
At the same time, he talked about pressuring the Department of Agrarian Reform to do its “homework” so that Congress could enact “a new and more efficient and more meaningful piece of legislation to address the need to reform land tenure in this country.”
The resolution was presented on the floor by Senator Gregorio “Gringo” Honasan, chairman of the committee on agrarian reform.
Before the voting, Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel Jr. expressed apprehension that the extension was “too short” or “too stringent” to achieve its purpose.
“In all honesty, I find the extension of six months period a little to short, too stringent for us to do what the agrarian reform department has failed to do for last several years,” he said.
“My only gut feel is that if we extend it only for six months, I’m really apprehensive that we will not be able to achieve the purpose for which the extension we seek is being done,” Pimentel said.
With reports from Michael Lim Ubac and Leila B. Salaverria, Philippine Daily Inquirer
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