“The DAR (Department of Agrarian Reform), in coordination with the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council (PARC) shall plan and program the final acquisition and distribution of all remaining unacquired and undistributed agricultural lands from the effectivity of this Act until 30 June 30, 2014.”[Section 7 of RA 6657 (CARL) as amended by RA 9700(CARPER)].
In 2009, the firm and powerful CARPER law was passed in order to give agrarian reform the needed final push and momentum in order to cover and distribute some 1.2 million hectares of prime agricultural lands to farmers and farm workers all over the country. Many of its new provisions were culled from the learning and actual experiences of agrarian reform advocates who, for over 20 years, have encountered all sorts of legal and technical obstacles and challenges in the agrarian reform implementation. These new provisions were designed to address such obstacles in order to fast-track the coverage of prime private agricultural lands and have these distributed to thousands of landless farmers and farmworkers all over the country within 5 years.
Five (5) years into the implementation of the CARPER law, all the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR), the government agency mandated to implement the agrarian reform program, could report was that the coverage was pegged at less than half of the targeted 1.2 M hectares that they were mandated to cover. Note that placing an agricultural land under the coverage of the agrarian reform is only the first step of the complex agrarian reform process.
It is still a long way off the law’s intent of actually distributing the land tofarmers and farm workers. And quite sadly, a number of these “covered” agricultural lands still eventually end up escaping agrarian reform coverage due to land conversion applications and exemptions granted by the DAR.
Hence, if this is the only reported number of hectares of land placed under agrarian reform coverage by the DAR, imagine what the number would be interms of lands actually distributed to true agrarian reform beneficiaries.
Based on the pronouncements of the DAR Secretary Virgilio de los Reyes himself, even he appears to be dissatisfied with the performance of the agency. In his reports and media interviews, he has given perhaps more excuses and justifications than the number of hectares actually distributed by the agency. And what is even more appalling is that most of his excuses and justifications refer to things that are within the complete control of the agency: complications in the DAR database, bureaucracy, unserved/unpublished notices of coverage, incomplete address, missing landtitles, to name a few. We from BALAOD Mindanaw have first-hand experience as we had worked with DAR in a number of areas in Mindanao for theidentification of agricultural lands “coverable” under the agrarian reform program. During the project, a number of coverable landholdings were clearly identified with the help of trained farmer-paralegals in the communities. All DAR has to do then was to start serving the subject landholdings with notices of coverage (NOCs). Unfortunately however, these identified lands have yet to be served with NOCs to this day.
The Congressional Oversight Committee on Agrarian Reform (COCAR) was also not of much help in this respect. Created by law in order to oversee and monitor the implementation of the CARPER law, COCAR could not even come up with any recommendation or finding as to why the implementation of the CARPER law generated only less than half of its original target.
BALAOD Mindanaw believes that CARPER is a powerful law on agrarian reform. But we have an ineffectual bureaucracy in DAR manned by an irresolute agency head and hesitant personnel. This is the tragedy of our country’s agrarian reform. A tragedy BALAOD Mindanaw wishes to discontinue. No longer shall the farmers and farm workers rely on DAR in subjecting large prime agricultural landholdings under the coverage of agrarian reform. The will and firm resolve for a genuine agrarian reform is with the landless farmers and farm workers, so must the power and mandate be.
It is BALAOD Mindanaw’s position that the coverage of the remaining “coverable” agricultural landholdings under agrarian reform continues beyond 30 June 2014 until its complete distribution to the agrarian beneficiaries. We believe these “coverable” lands were already subject to agrarian reform when the CARP law was passed in 1988. It was alreadysubject for coverage THEN; it is no less still subject for coverage even NOW.
Interpreting the law otherwise is just outright immoral and ridiculous. It is just like saying, “We have enough relief lunch packages for all typhoon victims on the line, but we will only serve food up to 1pm even if there are still lots of hungry people on line.” The remaining landless farmers and farm workers cannot be deprived of their right for ownership of the land they till especially since the only mode of acquisition was not even placed within their hands.
The only reasons why big landholdings have yet to be placed under agrarian reform is due to the machinations employed by the big landowners and the inefficiencies and lack of political will of the DAR.
This brings us to our second point. BALAOD Mindanaw believes that what expired last 30 June 2014 was DAR’s administrative power “to plan and program the final acquisition and distribution of all remaining unacquired and undistributed agricultural lands…” (Section 5 of RA 9700). But as what DAR
has shown the past 5 years, in fact, in the past 25 years, was that they failed miserably in this respect. DAR does not have the will and the spirit to perform what it is mandated to do. This, inspite of an improved and strengthened CARPER law to push, back-up and support its work. And extending the agency’s tenure to perform the same mandate will just be a repeat of what we already saw and experienced in the past 25 years: slow, bureaucratic, incomplete, unfinished. No, we have had enough of this special agency which was created supposedly to fast-track agrarian reform implementation. Just let DAR finish whatever pending cases it has in its hands right now. For the rest of the “un-covered” lands, let the normal government processes be taken to complete the work.
BALAOD Mindanaw reiterates that, this time around, the primary stakeholders of the agrarian reform program: the farmers and farm workers assume the active role in the program’s implementation unlike in the past where farmers merely wait for the DAR to cover, acquire and distribute an agricultural landholding. We bring to the table the following alternatives:
1. Private titled and untitled private agricultural landholdings may be placed under agrarian reform via judicial special proceedings (expropriation proceedings) through the farmers’ and/or farm workers’filing of a Petition for Coverage with the appropriate Regional Trial Court which shall adjudicate the merits of the petition including the determination of just compensation. After adjudication shall have been completed, the subsequent processes should just be ministerial in nature on the part of the government agencies involved: Land Bank for payment of just compensation, DENR for technical survey, Register of Deeds for transfer of title, etc. In each step of the process, the active involvement of the agrarian beneficiaries is available.
2. Government-owned agricultural lands may be placed for distribution through the farmers’ filing of an Application as Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries with the DENR which administers these lands. As administrator, it is the DENR that knows the farmers and true occupants of the subject land.
3. Public alienable and disposable agricultural lands may then be partitioned and distributed to appropriate farmer beneficiaries by the DENR through the Application for Free Patent which process is already provided by law.
4. The Department of Agriculture and the Land Bank of the Philippines shall continue to provide the farmer beneficiaries its regular supportfunctions as has been their respective mandate. It has already been 25 years since the enactment of the CARP law. To this day, thousands of hectares of prime agricultural lands have yet to be covered and distributed to landless farmers all over the country. And all these years, the DAR has yet to learn. It is still bogged down by their same old excuses.
We call upon President Benigno Aquino, III to hold true to his promise and that of his late mother’s promise, President Corazon C. Aquino, of seeing through the full implementation of CARP. The farmers have waited far too long. They are now ready to take it upon themselves to make the initiatives and steps towards enforcing a true and effective agrarian reform. That is how it should be.
Balay Alternative Legal Advocates for Development
in Mindanaw (BALAOD Mindanaw, Inc)
32E Kalambaguhan-Burgos Sts.,
Cagayan de Oro City 9000
Philippines
email: katcharcospuyo@gmail.com
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