Left plans fast during Pope visit

LUCENA CITY—Farmers facing dislocation from land being developed for government and private sector projects would stage a two-day fast, timed for the visit of Pope Francis in the hope of drawing the Pope’s attention to the demand for genuine land reform.

Organizers, however, were quick to clarify that the fast is not against the Pope.

“The farmers’ fasting is not a protest against the Pope. It is our way of seeking the ears of the Pope and a medium to amplify the farmers’ cry for land, justice and peace,” said Rafael Mariano, chair of the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP), in a statement on Monday.

He said the fast, set for Jan. 15 and 16, seeks to deliver a message to Francis that would unmask what KMP said was the “landed” mentality that prevails in the government under President Aquino. Aquino’s maternal relatives own Hacienda Luisita, one of the biggest estates in the country which had been put under land reform recently.

In his statement, Mariano said the policies of Mr. Aquino reveal the pro-landlord bias of his administration.

The KMP leader said participating in the fast are farmers who are to be displaced by big ticket government projects under the so-called Public Private Partnership program. One such project, said Mariano, is the planned P63-billion Metro Rail Transit Line 7 which is likely to be built by Universal LRT Corp., a company chaired by the President’s uncle, businessman Eduardo “Danding” Cojuangco.

KMP said some of the project’s planned components, like a depot, would be built over productive farms in the village of Tungkong Mangga in the town of San Jose del Monte in Bulacan province.

He said a delegation of farmers from Coron and Busuanga in Palawan province would join the fast. The farmers from Palawan are cultivating at least 39,000 hectares of land that had been declared by the government as pasture land through an order issued by President Aquino that transferred administration of the land to the Forest Management Bureau of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

The proclamation opens the farms being cultivated by the Palawan farmers to a reclassification that would exempt these from land reform.

Land reform had been the centerpiece program of the administration of the late President Corazon Aquino, Aquino’s mother, but its implementation had run into stumbling blocks, the biggest of which is opposition from landlords who had, at one point, warned of armed rebellion should their land be taken from them.