‘Binay estate another proof of CARP failure’

MANILA, Philippines - The Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) yesterday said the alleged hacienda of Vice President Jejomar Binay in Batangas is another “evidence” of the failure of the expired Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP).

In a statement, the KMP also accused businessman Antonio Tiu of being “a local conduit in global land-grabbing.”

Tiu has been claiming ownership of the hacienda, but some senators probing the issue have insisted he was merely Binay’s dummy.

“The agribusiness park in Rosario, Batangas allegedly owned by the Binays is a classic example of CARP’s failure to break landlords’ monopoly of lands. It is among the numerous haciendas like President Aquino’s Hacienda Luisita in Tarlac, Hacienda Roxas in Nasugbu also in Batangas, Araneta Estate in Bulacan, Hacienda Dolores in Pampanga, and Danding Cojuangco haciendas in Negros and Mindanao, among others, that the CARP failed to distribute,” KMP chair Rafael Mariano said.

Mariano said the CARP, enacted during the time of the late President Corazon Aquino and which expired last June 30, “was purposely designed to evade land distribution and strengthen the control of big landlords and agribusiness corporations over vast tracts of lands.”

He said CARP and the Department of Agrarian Reform “allowed the widespread land-grabbing, land-use conversion, re-concentration of vast tracts of lands, and land reform reversals, like in the case of the so-called Hacienda Binay.”

Mariano said “only a genuine agrarian reform program will put an end to the monopoly of lands by big landlords.”