Ces Drilon abduction confuses Negros media
The reported abduction of ABS-CBN anchor Ces Drilon plunged Negrense media personnel into confusion as to what should be done to help secure her freedom from her captors.
The request by ABS-CBN to respect the privacy of the Drilon family further reinforced this feeling of “What do we do?” Of course, there is the usual statement deploring the incident as contrary to law and the demand for the early release of Drilon and her crew.
Otherwise, everybody in the media here seems to have been caught in the dilemma as to what they could do to help affect the speedy release of Ces Drilon and her two companions.
That, to a certain extent, also had Negrenses focused on the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law that expired yesterday.
The Negros CARP Reform Movement and its allies continue pushing for extension. But the surprise was that the National Federation of Sugar Workers and its allied organizations condemned CARP as a fake program and asked that it be stopped.
“Our call is to junk CARP. We say no to CARP extension,” stressed NFSW spokesman Isidro Castillo during their rally at the
Instead, they called for genuine land reform as embodied in House Bill 3059 authored by the late Anakpawis Rep. Crispin Beltran.
Castillo stressed that for the last 20 years, there was never a genuine land reform. “Instead,” he added, “CARP has brought us many problems.”
The controversial Beltran bill calls for free distribution of land to farmers, the expansion of the program’s coverage to include all agricultural lands, and government support services to the beneficiaries.
Fr. Rodrigo Anoran Jr., executive director of the
Contrary to the position of the NFSW, Fr. Anoran said, “We have experiences that CARP has really helped improve the lives of the people. It is the blood and life of the workers.”
As far as they are concerned, he said CARP must be extended, pointing out that it “has moral and legal bases.”
No group, however, has come forward to dispute the findings of the provincial government’s extensive survey which showed that more than one-half of the agrarian reform beneficiaries are no longer tilling the lands awarded to them by the government. Nor did any group explain why some beneficiaries had more than one CLOA given to them by the DAR.
That study was commissioned by Negros Occidental Gov. Joseph Marañon just a few months before he succumbed to a lingering ailment.
But the chances of the bill getting the nod of Congress appear dim with Majority Leader Arthur Defensor citing the Senate’s failure to complete its committee study on the various proposals before it.
But Sen. Aquilino Pimentel, CARP’s leading advocate, pointed out that the DAR submitted only last Tuesday its report on expenditures and that DAR Secretary Nasser Pangandaman must have to answer questions on the report.
Otherwise, the senator asked Pangandaman to quit his post.
But it seems that Congress may not be able to tackle the CARP law’s extension before its regular session in July.
In Negros Occidental, DAR employees staged a noise barrage at their offices at
Thus, their cries of “We support CARP beyond 2008” was met with “Inutile, inutile” from the groups demanding its non-extension.
Anakpawis Rep. Rafael Mariano said the rush for the approval of the CARP extension for another five years “will turn the law from bad to worse.”
He batted instead for the House approval of the Genuine Agrarian Reform Bill authored by his predecessor, the late Rep. Beltran.
ADDENDUM. The tourism promotion program of
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