Bu-lat-lat (boo-lat-lat) verb: to search, probe, investigate, inquire; to unearth facts

Volume 2, Number 18              June 9 - 15,  2002                     Quezon City, Philippines







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CARP Post Mortem

Braganza Bragging on Failed Land Reform, Peasant Leaders Say

A Southern Tagalog peasant group said in the last 14 years of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), DAR only managed to give out 35% of its original 671,587 hectares targeted for distribution to farmer-beneficiaries in the region. "We cannot acquire lands through doctored statistics and false hopes or live in Macapagal-Arroyo's own living theater,” its leader said. 

 

By Gerry Albert-Corpuz

Bulatlat.com

"Braganza is bragging on failed land reform program."

This was the contention of the Southern Tagalog-based peasant group Kalipunan ng Samahang Magsasaka sa Timog Katagalugan (Kasama-TK) last week in response to Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) Secretary Hernani

Braganza's announcement that DAR under his tenure was able to meet its target for 2001 since President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's State of the Nation Address (SONA) last year.

Orly Marcellana, Kasama-TK secretary general, dared Braganza to face the Southern Tagalog peasants in a debate and stop plugging advertisements based on false facts and doctored figures.

"Let's do some reality checks here,” Marcellana said. “DAR is misleading the public and insulting the peasants as well."

The peasant leader said Braganza should stop telling lies and instead, attend to the agrarian cases filed by his group before DAR's national office in Quezon City. "Political grandstanding would not save DAR secretary Braganza from peasants' condemnation," he added.

Data from the militant peasant group said in the last 14 years of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), the DAR only managed to give out 35% of its original 671,587 hectares targeted for distribution to farmer-beneficiaries in the region. 

Marcellana said this figure was further reduced to more than one half leaving 308,922 hectares for distribution.  He said most of lands distributed to farmer-beneficiaries are locked in court battles with a group of Southern Tagalog warlords led by Eduardo " Danding" Cojuangco and landlord oligarchs belonging to Roxas, Ayala-Zobel and Puyat clans.

Land speculators'  and developers' paradise

The promotion of eco-tourism and export-bane industrialization in Southern Tagalog since the Marcos regime paved the way for massive land speculations and conversions of farmers' agricultural lands leading to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of peasants in the region.

Eddie Gumanoy, Kasama-TK chair, on the other hand, says. "Land conversions facilitated by landgrabbing activities in the region forced peasants to lose 500,000 hectares of their lands from land plunderers, real estate developers and greedy landlords in Southern Tagalog."

He said the so-called Agrarian Reform Communities (ARCs) which the government boasts as its showcase for land reform failed to stop landgrabbing incidents and land reconcentration among the landed  cliques in all provinces of the region. Some 496,000 hectares of prime agricultural lands were kept at the disposal of the region's despotic landlords, Kasama-TK said.

"We cannot acquire lands through doctored statistics and false hopes or live in Macapagal-Arroyo's own living theater,” Gumanoy said. “The president and his appointed chief in DAR cannot fool the public by just presenting a land reform accomplishment report with a power point presentation.”

It's the land that counts!,"  the militant leader said. 

Escape artist hiding in panic room

The Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) urged Braganza to leave his panic room inside DAR's national office compound and face the farmers outside. For weeks, the farmers have been staging rallies on the issue of land and criminalization of agrarian disputes outside the DAR headquarters.

"Why evade talking with the farmers?  They traveled from as far as Northern Luzon to his office in Quezon City to say they want land and not militarization. But Secretary Braganza opted to play an all-around escape artist in vain attempt to elude Filipino farmers'  wholesale condemnation," said KMP chair Rafael Mariano.

The militant peasant leader, who is also the chair of the alliance group Bagong Alyansang Makabayan said DAR even surpassed the dismal performance of the deposed Estrada administration in agrarian reform.

Citing an independent study from agrarian reform advocacy group, Mariano said that in the two-and-a-half years of the Estrada administration, DAR managed to distribute a total of 333, 389 hectares for a batting average of 133,355 hectares a year.

"If land reform under the Estrada administration was bad, then it was exceptionally bad too under the Macapagal-Arroyo administration,” he added. 

The KMP said DAR only managed to distribute a total of 109,661 hectares of land in the first year of the Arroyo administration or roughly 9,140 hectares per month." Is this what Braganza has been talking about the whole year round?  That's a lot of nonsense!,"  Mariano scored. 

The DAR and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) will target a total of 210, 636 hectares of land for distribution this year. Each agency was assigned to carry distribution of 105,000 hectares. 

Congress has allocated P 2.854 billion for DAR's land acquisition program under the Voluntary Offer to Sell (VOS) scheme. Projections from some quarters showed the budget would only cover 50,000 hectares of land for distribution.  Bulatlat.com


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