Negros Execs, Sugar Barons Sabotaging Land Reform, Farmers Say

Negros Occidental is one of many provinces where the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), crafted 16 years ago, remains in limbo. In a recent move, local executives, reportedly in connivance with sugar landlords as well as police and military officials, have come up with yet another scheme which organized farmers said is meant to sabotage agrarian reform.

By Karl G. Ombion 
Bulatlat.com / Cobra-ans

BACOLOD CITY – Negros Occidental Gov. Joseph Maranon, other local executives and police and military officials are being accused of colluding with sugar landlords to sabotage agrarian reform and control the movement of peasants.

The accusation – which came from militant peasant and sugar workers’ groups – was in reaction to a proposal by Maranon, other officials and sugar landlords to form a Provincial Council. The Council, conceived in a proposed Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) discussed last January, is supposed to coordinate the implementation of agrarian reform in the province.

The proposed MoA suggests that agrarian reform in the province shall be subsumed under so-called development priorities. It also prohibits land occupations without the order of the provincial council and the regional office of the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR), referring to the recent occupation of lands by a group of farmers.

The land occupation, which was reportedly marred by military harassments, prompted provincial and police authorities to set up the Council, sources from the sugar industry said.

The proposed agreement also provides that peasants will be represented in the council through the Provincial Sugar Workers Council which is considered by organized farmers as landlord-dominated. Furthermore, reclassified lands are free from reform coverage.

Only regular farm workers directly tilling the land as evidenced by payroll shall qualify as agrarian reform beneficiaries, the MoA also provides.

As proposed, the Provincial Council will be composed of the provincial governor as chairman, and the agrarian reform regional director, vice-chairman. Also represented are the 303rd Infantry Brigade commander, police provincial director, Confederation of Sugar Planters Association Inc., United Sugar Planters Federation of the Philippines, National Federation of Sugar Planters, League of Municipal Mayors and the Provincial Sugar Workers Council representing the farm workers and peasants.

An old trickGuillermo Barreta, a leader of the National Federation of Sugar Workers (NFSW), assailed the MoA as a landlord's trick to force peasants to accept a “selective, pro-landlord, negotiated and harmonious land reform program” led by the “landlord-comprador dominated” provincial government.

Barreta accused the proponents of the Council of protecting large sugar and commercials farms from agrarian reform coverage while supporting the reconcentration of vast lands by the landlords and agri-business companies.

Richard Sarrosa, spokesperson of the Kilusanng Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP – Peasant Movement in the Philippines)-Negros also called the proposal “one of those rehashed old tricks of the big landlord-compradors and state bureaucrats in Negros to coopt and eventually subject the peasant movement into toeing a land reconcentration program and an agro-industrial development program of the big landlords and agribusiness corporations."

Bulatlat.com research revealed that the proposal had been tried in the past by former Gov. Daniel Bitay Lacson through his 60-30-10 land reform scheme. Lacson’s scheme prescribed that 60% of lands in the province will be maintained for sugar farms, 30% for high value export crops, and 10% for land distribution through voluntary offer to sell and temporary land-use scheme.

The other was the Economic Development Management System (EDMS) program of Lacson and economist Sixto K.Roxas. Roxas aimed to organize Negros into economic management districts that would oversee the implementation of the Marcos Balanced-Agro Industrial Development System plan.

Both schemes failed, however. Peasant organizations and the local revolutionary movement exposed and opposed the programs. Besides, the programs lacked the support of many big landlords because of their capital-intensive requirements.

Both the leaders of NFSW and KMP said the proposal is no different from the Regional Tripartite Wage and Productivity Board where, they said, wage issues and decisions are controlled and dictated by the big capitalists in connivance with government. Bulatlat.com / Cobra-Ans

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