On CARP: Congress, listen to the landowners!

There are still some controversial bills hanging in Congress. But whether there is time to deliberate on them, we really cannot predict. Thanks to the fact that the majority in the House are still insisting to “force” Charter changes via a constituent assembly (con-ass) despite the withdrawal of Rep. Louie Villafuerte and his group, which means, they are wasting precious time. I agree with Rep. Villafuerte that Cha-cha via con-ass is dead because of lack of material time. If the members of the House of Representatives want to redeem themselves and become real statesmen, then the only option left is to allow the election of delegates to a constitutional convention (con-con) together with the candidates for the 2010 polls.

If our members of Congress agree to this scheme, then it should put safeguards, like delegates must not be members of a political party or they should put a “collatilla” where con-con delegates should sign a public document that disallows them to seek any elective public office in the first elections after the ratification of the new Constitution. With this prohibition in place, we can be assured that the election of con-con delegates together with the 2010 polls will be non-partisan.

The other controversial bill that is still hanging is the Comprehensive Land Reform Program (CARP). Some members in Congress want to extend CARP despite the reality that there has been no official report on whether this 20-year program was a success or a failure? So where’s that official report from the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR)? Perhaps we should have another report, this time from the Department of Justice (DOJ) or the Office of the Ombudsman as to how many graft cases have been filed against corrupt municipal agrarian reform officers (MAROs).

We’ve been saying that CARP was a horrendous failure because this program literally got land from those productive farms and given to non-farmers! I would like to emphasize the fact that a year ago, 20 years after CARP had expired, suddenly this country faced a perilous rice shortage. Thanks to CARP, we’re now importing more rice from our neighboring countries like Vietnam who learned to plant rice from the Philippines! This is one big joke on us Filipinos!

We expected that CARP should have increased our rice production! But instead, thanks to the widespread corruption in the Department of Agrarian Reform (where only a few cases have been filed against the corrupt officials involved), the legitimate and still landless farmers are still seeking to have their land, while those who do not deserve any land virtually sold what they got from CARP and worse, many of these lands have been converted into housing subdivisions, at least in one case in Cebu. Yet no one has been hailed to court, thanks to the Office of the Do-Nothing Ombudsman!

For me, it is a puzzlement that Congress refuses to give in to the whims of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) when they asked Congress not to push the Reproductive Health (RH) Bill, which in my book, the Catholic Church ought to be heard. But Congress seems to succumb to the “pressure” from the CBCP when it comes to approving the extension of CARP when the Catholic Church does not have any arable lands anymore and therefore, they do not know much about CARP.

Anyway, my good friend Silverio Berenguer, representative of the landowners in the Audit Management and Investigative Committee of the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council, gave me a copy of their position paper that was sent to Congress. Since it’s quite long, allow me to reprint only the more important points.

First of all, the statement clearly declares: “CARP has failed to achieve its goals, namely improved food productivity, alleviate poverty and achieve social justice.” Surely we know that the majority of Filipinos are still very poor, while those who are elected in Congress have become millionaires! On these points alone, you can say that CARP is a miserable failure and Congress takes on the parallel role of the captain of the Titanic pushing forward to the iceberg called CARP without correcting its 20-year errors!

Perhaps the most telling point in this position paper is the declaration that despite six million hectares already distributed to farmer-beneficiaries, we are still known as the world’s number one importer of rice. This should sound the alarm that CARP has not given us any self-sufficiency in food production simply because those arable lands that were “CARP-ed” fell into the hands of non-farmers! This time around, it is time for Congress to listen to the landowners who lost their lands in exchange for nothing, not even food security, which everyone, landowners and farmers alike, needs!

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For e-mail responses to this article, write to [email protected]. Bobit Avila’s columns can also be accessed through www.philstar.com. He also hosts a weekly talkshow, “Straight from the Sky,” every Monday, 8 p.m., only in Metro Cebu on Channel 15 of SkyCable.