CARP drives division deep into farmers’ ranks

ANGRY messages are attention-grabbers in the protest rallies of militants demanding genuine reforms, like this one during the 26th year of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program in June held by farmers near the Aquino residence on Times Street in Quezon City. LEO M. SABANGAN II

CITY OF SAN FERNANDO— Agrarian reform continues to divide groups calling for equitable land distribution but can’t agree on how it should be done.

One group, Save Agrarian Reform Alliance (Sara), wants more funding for the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), which has been considered a revolutionary policy of the late President Corazon Aquino but which is now all but dead.

The militant Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP), however, said the CARP, being a half-baked land reform program, should be allowed to die and replaced with a genuine agrarian reform program.

Trinidad Domingo,  spokesperson for Sara, pointed to “massive budget cuts” for the CARP in 2015 as a sign that the government appears to be backing out of land reform.

She said the cuts “completely contradict President Aquino’s promise” to fully enforce the  CARP  before he steps down in 2016.

She said the national budget for 2015 showed that funding for the CARP had been reduced to P11.7 billion, which, she added, is lower by nearly half of the P20.7-billion funding proposed by the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR).

Programs for land purchase and distribution and agrarian justice delivery took a P3-billion cut.

Compensation for landowners took a P4.6-billion cut.

Domingo said there was “no question that each of these proposed budget features for 2015 will have the effect of worsening the already dismal implementation of the CARP.”

Domingo said there were still 80,000 to 106,000 hectares of agrarian reform lands that had not been distributed to landless farmers.

But KMP protested the inclusion of P6.4 billion in the 2015 budget of the  DAR, warning that this could be a source of the now unconstitutional Disbursement Acceleration Program.

The group said it believed the 25-year-old CARP was “already dead” after the twice extended program lapsed on June 30.

KMP said the P6.4 billion was allocated for land acquisition and distribution.

In a statement, KMP chair Rafael Mariano said the reduction of the  DAR’s budget did “not necessarily mean that the CARP is no longer a cash cow of big landlords and corrupt bureaucrats.”

“Obviously, without any law on agrarian reform, P6.4 billion could turn into an automatic savings for the DAP and other corruption-tainted projects,” Mariano said.

KMP instead demanded the passage of House Bill No. 252 or the genuine agrarian reform bill that Mariano said “seeks to break landlord control and monopoly of lands through the nationalization and free distribution of lands to landless farmers.” Tonette Orejas, Inquirer Central Luzon