Some 400 farmers massed in front of the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) in Quezon City, voicing their demands for the fulfillment of a promise, but the 25th anniversary of the celebrated land-to-the-tiller program yesterday went largely unnoticed.
The group belonging to Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) then marched on Mendiola bridge outside Malacañang for a brief rally to remind President Aquino he still had to complete the distribution of nearly 1 million hectares of land under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) before it expires next year.
The KMP criticized CARP as “the most deceptive, longest-running, most expensive and bloodiest agrarian reform program.”
“It has been 25 years of the government’s CARP and still, vast haciendas remain intact and undistributed,” KMP secretary general Antonio Flores said in a statement. He said most of the 4.4 million-hectare land distributed by DAR were public lands.
“What actually transpired in the 25 years of CARP is the buy-and-sell transaction between the government, the DAR and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, and the supposed farmer beneficiary,” he said, adding that the DAR’s figures did not even reflect reversals and cancellations of certificates of land ownership.”
“The continuing land monopoly and control of a few landlord families shows that the bogus CARP was not meant to break land monopoly and was instead implemented only to appease peasant unrest in the countryside and to create an illusion of land reform,” he said.
“Breaking land monopoly and the free distribution of lands to farmers is the real solution to the centuries old land problem and a truly meaningful step toward genuine social change.”
“The farmers are restive,” said Jansept Geronimo, a peasant leader in Lucena City. “The farmers have long been suffering from injustice.”
He said farmers from the Bontoc Peninsula, a hotbed of communist insurgency, were planning a long march culminating in a protest on July 22, when President Aquino delivers his State of the Nation Address at the opening of the 16th Congress following the successful campaign of administration candidates in the May 23 elections.
Aquino’s mother, democracy icon Corazon Aquino, launched CARP as the centerpiece of a social justice promise to ease poverty and remove one of the major causes of a festering communist insurgency.
“He must do everything in his power to show that he means business,” said Alberto Jayme, president of Task Force Mapalad (TFM), an umbrella group for farmer organizations in Negros, Mindanao and Batangas.
Agrarian Reform Secretary Virgilio de los Reyes was out of town on Monday and instead, his undersecretary, Jose Grageda, issued a statement reiterating that the department would be able to complete land acquisition and distribution before the President’s term ends in 2016.
“We remain optimistic that the remaining balance of ‘Carpable’ lands will be acquired by the DAR and distributed to qualified beneficiaries before June 2016,” he said in a statement.
Distribution beyond 2014
Grageda appealed to agrarian reform advocates, particularly farmers’ groups and civil society, to stop telling CARP beneficiaries that the program coverage was set to end in 2014 saying, “These irresponsible statements may only agitate our landless peasants to resort to violence.”
De los Reyes has been roundly criticized by farmer groups and the Catholic Church for his alleged ineptitude.
Grageda said rumor of the CARP expiration next year was based on a misinterpretation of the law, emphasizing that there was nothing in it that limits the distribution to next year.
“In fact, Section 30 of Republic Act No. 9700 (amendments to the CARP) states that the implementation of CARP can be conducted even beyond 2014 with respect to those with pending case or proceeding. This is the purpose why the DAR has been diligently working to issue and validly serve all notices of coverage before 2014,” he said.
The notice of coverage initiates the compulsory acquisition of private agricultural lands and is similar to summons issued by a court, he said.
“Once a notice of coverage is served, the landholding it covers is deemed encompassed by the CARP,” Grageda pointed out, adding that it was critical for the agency to serve all notices of coverage before June 30 next year.
As of December 2012, he said, the DAR had issued around 95 percent of the notices of coverage for all agricultural landholdings above 10 hectares. A close coordination by the agency with the Land Registration Authority has allowed DAR to obtain certified true copies of the covered land titles for the issuance of the notices.—With a report from Delfin T. Mallari Jr., Inquirer Southern Luzon