“We are not here to create trouble,” said Danilo Ramos, secretary-general of the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP, or Peasant Movement of the Philippines). “We are here to express our sentiments about this law.”Ramos and his groups tried to enter the gallery to watch the plenary session but were prevented by House security, which even barred employees from entering the hall at some point during the day.
Lacandazo of Kasama-TK decried the prioritization of CARPER over the Genuine Agrarian Reform Bill (GARB). Authored by the late Anakpawis Rep. Crispin Beltran, GARB or House Bill 3059 seeks to distribute land to landless farmers for free. Filed in November 2007, GARB is still pending with the House committee on agrarian reform.
“A genuine land reform law is impossible to attain in a Congress dominated by landlords, greedy politicians and their cohorts,” Lacandazo said. “The true interest of the House leadership is clear – it is to perpetuate the Arroyo ruling clique in power, and not to serve the poor farmers, which make up the majority of this country.”
Rep. Dato Arroyo from Camarines Sur, the president’s son, defended his “yes” vote by saying that “what we need is an extension of CARP that may be seen faulty or flawed by many of our colleagues, but that extension is better than having nothing at all.”
(Photo by Janess Ann J. Ellao / bulatlat.com)
The House leadership conducted the nominal voting in an unusual way – it called on each legislator using the reverse alphabet, seemingly so that the Arroyos in Congress, all four of them, would not be among the first to vote “yes” one after the other.
And for some reason, many of those who voted for CARPER could not say their votes out loud and were using signs to communicate their “yes” votes. (Bulatlat.com)
Land reform in the philippines is actually land grabbing. It is land deform. What with 78% plummet to poverty, agricultural produce scarce and had to be shamelessly imported. It is not well studied, passion was the name of the hour. It was too much made a political tool at the expense of the other poorer and wider sector of society. It was actually a dole-out and tool to perpetuate politicians lust for power. It is just a continuation of poverty and unproductivity at almost P500.00 billion expense after 5 more miserable years. Meanwhile, after pampering pseudo farmers backed by misguided and error prone clergy, many cannot go to school, get medical attention, better government pay, get social security for the aged, and most of all destroyed an institution founded on private initiative. Surely, economic justice can best be won by free men through free enterprise. Sorry, this is made in the name of free speech in the honest belief we need more statesmen to uplift the lives of all, fairly. Gustong-gusto iyang CARP ng mga tamad, puhunan lamang ay mangulo. Paano naman ang maliliit na may-lupa, kumakain din, magpapagamot, papasok sa eskuela ang mga anak at apo. Papaano tutuga ang Pilipinas?