The challenge is not for the faint of heart

At first I thought I would write on “Let us not be derailed...it is Hacienda Luisita” for today. If the impeachment hearing begins tomorrow it would be timely. But I changed my mind. One more day may make all the difference to think more deeply what the real issue is about. It is so easy to be carried away by flashy headlines in newspapers by agenda setting oligarch owned press.

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Here is one from Bulatlat – a publication that I confess I would not normally pay attention to. But it had very good points to ponder on before the Corona impeachment hearing tomorrow.

“Just compensation” when referring to agrarian reform is an oxymoron. All agrarian reform programs of Philippine presidents provide for “just compensation” for landlords whose lands are taken by the government for distribution to farmers. But this does not make it just.

“How could you own that which will outlive you?” Macliing Dulag, a Kalinga tribal chieftain who led the struggle against the building of the Chico River Dam during the 1970s, was once quoted as saying in reply to a demand by an army engineer to show him the title to the land. Macliing Dulag was killed when soldiers fired at his house on April 24, 1980.

These words from the respected leader of the Butbut tribe of Kalinga province could very well serve as an indictment of the monopoly of land by a few landed families in the country. How could these landlords, such as the Cojuangcos, Lobregats, Yulos, among others, lay claim to vast tracts of land that existed before them and would outlive generations of their families?

If one is to trace the history of this country, land monopoly began during Spanish colonization. It was a result of land grabbing by the Spanish colonizers who passed on the land to their heirs who, in turn, either kept it or sold it to other landed families.

Thus, even if the monopoly of the land by a few families was legitimized by the country’s laws, it is still the greatest and most prevalent form of injustice in the country today.

More so for the Cojuangco clan of Hacienda Luisita Inc.: their claim to the land, which they bought from its former Spanish owners, was even financed by taxpayers money through a loan agreement entered into by Don Jose Cojuangco with the Central Bank of the Philippines and the Government Service Insurance System. Based on the loan agreement, the Cojuangcos should have turned over the land to the farmers more than four decades ago.

Second, it is through the labor of farmers and farmworkers that the land was made productive. It is also their labor that created the wealth of landlords who contributed nothing to making the land productive. It is this landlord-farmer relationship that has enslaved a vast majority of Filipinos for centuries.

Third, landlords are not wanting in wealth and capital after centuries of oppressing and exploiting farmers and farm workers. They belong to the one percent of the population who corner around 80 to 90 percent of the country’s wealth.

On the contrary, it is the farmers who are capital-strapped.

Fourth, under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law, the government would compensate landlords for their lands, which were covered by agrarian reform. In turn, farmers and farm workers are supposed to pay for his through monthly amortizations. This is the biggest flaw of the agrarian reform law. How could farmers pay their monthly amortization when they even have to borrow money so that they could plant and the farming technology is so backward that the harvest is hardly sufficient for their families’ consumption? Thus, it is almost certain that farmers, who would not be able to cope with the monthly amortization, would be forced to resell the land, which was awarded to them, to the landlords.

So where is the justness in compensating landlords such as the Cojuangco clan of Hacienda Luisita?

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I was not in Facebook until recently -–only one year. Ironically, I did because of an article in the New Yorker by Malcolm Gladwell: Can we network a social revolution? He said it takes more than social networking to launch a revolution. Maybe so. Filipinos today may prove him wrong.

But he did say something very instructive. “Social revolution requires personal commitment and that does not happen in social networking.”

But supposing there was already some kind of personal commitment just waiting to be tapped and organized? It is happening now in the Philippines with so many dissatisfied with its politics and the kind of government it installs. They are also dissatisfied with the way media reports about politics and government. You hear it every time despite what SWS and Pulse Asia surveys report.

So I would not be too quick about putting down social networking as a tool for social revolution.

A catalyst is necessary to convince netizens to go beyond networking. The Corona impeachment hearing tomorrow at the Senate promises to be that catalyst.

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I did not foresee the Corona catalyst then. Like everyone else fighting for systemic change, I did not think that chatting in the networks would be enough. We may have to go to the streets.

“The drawbacks of networks scarcely matter if the network isn’t interested in systemic change  if it just wants to frighten or humiliate or make a splash  or if it doesn’t need to think strategically. But if you’re taking on a powerful and organized establishment you have to be a hierarchy,” Malcolm adds.

That is how I met Filipinos like Jerry Ocampo, Patricia Ilagan, Maite Quesada et al (can’t mention all their names because it has become a rather large group with whom I have continued communicating through Facebook.) We all wanted to do more than debating or chatting in Facebook. But are we ready for what it takes to bring systemic change?

Can we evolve a burning issue in Facebook into a plan for action? That is the question and something we will find out in the coming days. I was rushing out of the Supreme Court lobby on the day that CJ Corona accepted the challenge of defending the rule of law when I heard someone say, “we have found a leader.”

 Finally, here is a quote from Gladwell that you can take with you tomorrow: “Activism that challenges the status quo  that attacks deeply rooted problems  is not for the faint of heart.”