MANILA (Mindanao Examiner / Feb. 11, 2014) – Philippine policemen and soldiers dispersed a peaceful rally of farmers outside a road leading to the Presidential Palace in Manila.
The farmers – who are members of the Task Force Mapalad – were demanding the Aquino government to fully implement the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP).
Task Force Mapalad President Alberto Jayme said they trooped to Manila from various provinces to seek an audience with President Benigno Aquino and remind him of his promises made in June 2012 that he will distribute lands to CARP beneficiaries.
Jayme said the backlog for land acquisition and distribution has risen and the accomplishment rate has hit rock bottom and that they see the impossibility of government meeting the agrarian reform mandate.
He said: “We had asked for a revamp at Department of Agrarian Reform in 2012, but government did not want it, as if it were changing horses in midstream. We agreed. The result has been calamitous. The accomplishment rate in Negros Island alone was 8.5 percent from 2010 to 2012.”
He said it is now too late for the Aquino to seek dialogues when it had engaged in such dialogues since 2010 but “its action did not match its words.”
“We wanted a dialogue and what we got were bruises and aching bodies after the Presidential Security Group and the police ganged up on us, as if they do not want us to submit a letter to the President that contains our grievances,” Jayme said in a statement sent to the regional newspaper Mindanao Examiner.
The farmers also assailed government spokesman Hermino Coloma for saying that
work is being undertaken to address the issues raised by TFM.
“There has been a glut of dialogues in the past two years, and we have been shuttling from department to department and from office to office to see to it that notices of coverage are issued and Certificates of Landownership Awards registered,” Jayme said.
“We had a dialogue with the President and what we heard was the promise of Mr. Aquino that we would have land within a year. That was in 2012. We also heard the President tell us that who among the people at the Department of Agrarian Reform are not achieving their targets and those who need to work diligently. We also talked with Social Welfare Secretary Dinky Soliman and Budget Secretary Butch Abad, and we even cooperated with a multi-stakeholder task force that would monitor the compliance of the DAR with the promises made by the President,” he added.
Jayme told Coloma that thousands of farmers have become more disgruntled as DAR Secretary Virgilio de los Santos not only turned back the hands of time by imposing Administrative Orders 7 and 9 that stopped CARP implementation dead in its tracks.
De los Santos allegedly barred DAR personnel from proceeding with the distribution of lands to the farmers in areas still subject to judicial dispute or when the landowners are determined to block the CARP implementation.
Agrarian Undersecretary Jose Grageda, who promised to proceed with the installation of farmers and the registration of CLOAs, also has failed miserably in subjecting areas considered to be least contentious to the coverage of CARP, Jayme said.
“The undersecretary has becoming a most promising official and he continues to promise the completion of CARP barely four months before it ends officially,” Jayme said, adding “Undersecretary Anthony Parungao had countermanded the Supreme Court and the DAR Secretary by stopping action on the Rabat property in Davao Oriental, arguing that the large hacienda in the province is the subject of an appeal for exemption before the Office of the President.”
The exclusive jurisdiction of the DAR has, indeed, been compromised by this latest legal theory promoted by Parungao since the law is clear that only the DAR Secretary has the authority to pass judgment on properties that are within the ambit of CARP and those that are not, Jayme said.
De los Reyes was also accused of lawyering for landlords, with Mindanao farmers saying he was responsible for land conversions and the inexplicable delay in the LAD component of CARP.
De los Reyes had been a “weakling” and “wishy-washy” DAR secretary, claimed the TFM farmers from Batangas, who also denounced the secretary, their provincemate, “for being at the beck and call of wealthy landlowners.”
The Mindanao farmers had been particularly aghast at De los Reyes’ allowing one big landowning family in Davao Oriental control of their large parcel of land since they are pleading with the Office of the President to exempt their land from CARP.
Another family, also of Davao Oriental, wants to retain part of their holdings on the pretext that it would be converted to industrial use, the actual operation of which never required a big parcel of land, and De los Reyes acceded to this plea, Jayme said.
Farmers have called on De los Reyes to resign for allegedly failing to do his job.
The farmers supported the January 22 letter of 10 Roman Catholic prelates and hundreds of organizations pushing for another CARP continuation. In their letter, the various groups covered CARP’s June 30, 2014 deadline, strategic directions, rising human rights violations in rural areas and the commitments of the Aquino administration on agrarian reform.
They said the proposed law, crafted in December 2013, gives a two-year breathing spell for CARP and would permit the administration to work “full steam ahead” in completing the task of distributing land to landless peasants.
The CARP backers said the issuance of notices of coverage must likewise be extended.
Jayme’s group has been hounding De los Reyes to work harder in issuing notices of coverage to all parcels of land covered by CARP but the issuances of NOCs, but he had not acted on it and because of this farmers nationwide have resorted to mass actions to denounce the the government’s failure to implement the CARP.
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