Still carping at CARP. As the Comprehensive
Agrarian Reform Program expires on Monday,
thousands of farmers under the Kilusang
Magbubukid ng Pilipinas hold a protest march
from the Department of Agrarian Reform
office in Quezon City to the Chino Roces
(Mendiola) Bridge in Manila demanding
genuine land reform program. Manny Palmero
by Rio N. Araja, Dexter A. See / Manila Standard Today
A farmers’ protest stopped work at the Department of Agrarian Reform’s central office on Monday, the last day of the implementation of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program Extension with Reforms.
More than 1,500 members of the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas stormed the department’s office on Elliptical Road in Diliman, Quezon City, demanding a new and genuine land reform program.
The farmers, led by KMP chairman Rafael Mariano, and other groups barricaded the department’s entrance gate as early as 7 am, preventing 70 percent of the department’s total employees from going in.
But the traffic eased up in the area when the protesters left the department and marched on Malacañang in Manila.
In Baguio City, Agrarian Reform Secretary Virgilio delos Reyes said the distribution of agricultural land to landless farmers could go beyond the CARP extension deadline by 2016, which meant thousands of DAR employees would still have a lot of work to do.
He said the government’s duty to distribute land to the landless farmers was not bound by any deadlines since it had a constitutional mandate to provide land to the landless.
But Mariano said the “fake” agrarian reform program was “dead and a total failure.”
“Farmers remain landless, haciendas are still intact and under the control of the big landlords and agribusinesses,” he said.
“The illusion spread by the Aquino government that there is land distribution in the Philippines was demolished by the fact that, after 26 years of the sham CARP, the Filipino peasantry remains landless.”
Mariano said the program even legitimized feudal and semi-feudal exploitation in the countryside, promoted semi-feudal exploitation through non-land transfer schemes, joint ventures, corporative schemes, and the distribution of worthless shares of stock such as the stock- distribution option scheme in Hacienda Luisita in Tarlac.
The Aquino administration’s attempt to raise the CARP from the dead when he certified a bill giving the program a two-year extension only showed that the program was just an instrument of the hacienderos to gain control over vast tracts of land, he said.
He called for the approval of House Bill 252 or the Genuine Agrarian Reform Bill stipulating that, “based on the government’s 1988 Listasaka program, there are 8.9 million hectares of private agricultural land.
“And granting that the DAR’s so-called distribution of 2.6 million hectares of private agricultural land out of its highly questionable 4.4 million-hectare accomplishment is correct, there are still 6.3 million hectares of private agricultural land under the control of the big landlords and agro-corporations.
