[ malaya.com.ph ] May 31,2008
THE militant farmers' group Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) said the two-year suspension on the conversion of rice lands ordered by President Arroyo through Administrative Order 226 will be useless if the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program is extended.
"Gloria's AO is practically useless because it is done in the context of the dubious act of extending a fake land reform program that will be inimical not just to the welfare of farmers but the whole Filipino people," the group said.
KMP noted that it was under CARP that massive land use conversions and crop conversions occurred, with its extension then more of the same can be expected. "It is the CARP itself and Department of Justice Opinion No. 44 that are primarily responsible for massive and rampant land use conversions," KMP chairman Rafael Mariano noted in a statement.
KMP said that in Southern Tagalog alone 1,302, 375.37 hectares are already under land use conversion and 172,967.30 hectares have already been converted. It said Sentro para sa Tunay na Repormang Agraryo (SENTRA), a volunteer lawyers group for farmers, is handling many cases of irrigated rice lands that are exempted from CARP and are being converted.
KMP said agro-transnational giants Dole and Del Monte are now in control of at least 220,000 hectares of land in Mindanao and under CARP they are going to expand this to 300,000 hectares more. The group claimed 1.2 million more hectares are planned to be leased for use as jatropha plantations under the RP-China agricultural deals.
"With these in store under the extension of CARP, only 2.5 million hectares of rice lands will be left," Mariano said.
KMP has consistently opposed the extension of the present CARP past its expiration on June 10 and supports the passage of the Genuine Agrarian Reform Bill (House Bill 3059), claiming that CARP's extension is equivalent to the extension of the rice crisis.
But other farmers' groups like the Task Force Mapalad (TFM) and Ugnayan ng mga Lokal na Nagsasariling Organisasyon ng mga Mamamayan sa Kanayunan (Unorka) are pushing for the extension of CARP under the Reform CARP Movement. The members have been camping out in front of the Department of Agrarian Reform office in Quezon City to press for the passage of the law that would extend the program that still has to distribute 1.1 milion hectares to farmer-beneficiaries.
Yesterday, TFM unveiled effigies of what it called CARP "executioners" like Representatives Ignacio Arroyo and Alfredo Maranon III both of Negros Occidental, Pablo Garcia of Cebu, and Senators Juan Miguel Zubiri, Juan Ponce Enrile and Joker Arroyo whom they accused of sabotaging or blocking the passage of the extension law.
TFM cited thousands of pending land cases throughout the country which include the landholdings of the Zubiris in Mindanao and of the Arroyos in Negros Occidental and said this could trigger renewed social unrest if left unresolved because of the non-extension of CARP. "Ano na lang ang mangyayari sa libo-libong mga kaso na ito kung kung hindi madu-dugtungan ang CARP?" TFM president Jose Rodito Angeles said. - Randy Nobleza
________________________________________________________________________
