06/08/2008 [ tribune.net.ph ]
Farmers and other rural-based groups opposed to the extension of the 20-year old Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) yesterday reminded the influential Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) that not all peasants in the country are supportive of the move to prolong the life of the soon-to-expire agrarian reform program.
Five of the biggest rural groups across the country — the activist farmer group Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP), the fisherfolk alliance Pambansang Lakas ng Kilusang Mamamalakaya ng Pilipinas (Pamalakaya), the agricultural workers union Unyon ng Mga Manggagawa sa Agrikultura (UMA) and the peasant women group Amihan-National Federation of Peasant Women cautioned the CBCP on its institutional support to House Bill 4077 which seeks to extend CARP for another five years.
“We would like to remind the archbishops and bishops of the CBCP that not all farmers and rural people in the countryside are supportive of CARP’s extension,” the groups said in a joint press statement.
“In fact, a snowballing mass support and rural wide favorable public opinion is gearing toward the replacement of CARP by GARB based on the outcome of church-led consultations and other forums where GARB and CARP extension are discussed and ranged against each other,” they said.
“Our leaders who participated in regional and sub-regional consultations called by the CBCP in preparation for the second staging of the National Rural Congress sometime in July said a significant number of farmers and representatives of the rural sector are inclined to support GARB and not the extension of the bankrupt and bogus CARP,” Danilo Ramos, KMP secretary general said.
Ramos added the mere fact that CARP extension was endorsed by Malacañang is a political testimony that the proposed move is “immoral and extremely corrupt.”
“President Arroyo is the chief political representative of the landlord class in the Philippines. She will not endorse a measure that will hurt them and their local and foreign partners in crime,” the peasant leader said.
The anti-CARP farmers composed of 1,000 peasant and fisherfolk activists belonging to Samahan ng Magbubukid ng Batangas (Sambat), Kalipunan ng Samahang Magbubukid sa Timog-Katagalugan (Kasama-TK), Pamalakaya-Southern Tagalog, and Haligi ng Batangueñong Anakdagat (Habagat) are now on the third day of a long march from different Southern Tagalog provinces to demand the passage of GARB principally authored by late Anakpawis party-list Rep. Crispin Beltran.
Pamalakaya national chairman Fernando Hicap told detractors of GARB and proponents of CARP extension that CARP beneficiaries themselves were victims of the twenty-year-old bogus agrarian reform program.
“Proponents of this bogus land reform program failed to explain the real score behind thousands of cases of land reform reversals, compounded by confiscation of land titles, thousands of cases of land use conversions, across-the country land grabbing extravaganza and the unexplained P143 billion spent for CARP, which all happened in the 20 years of CARP,” the Pamalakaya leader added.
“Now GARB detractors have the guts to tell the farmers that CARP is meant for social justice despite the fact the CARP failed the tillers of this land over the last 20 years. The ring leaders of the pro-CARP syndicate in and out of Malacañang are obscuring the truth in the name of their respective political and material agenda,” Hicap said.
Meanwhile, two lawmakers in the House of Representatives filed a measure mandating the Department of Agriculture to take appropriate steps to ensure that an effective irrigation system is put in place to increase food production in the country.
Representatives Carlos Padilla and Herminia Roman, authors of House Resolution 539, have called for the immediate review of the management and funding requirements for maintaining existing dams and irrigation systems.
Padilla and Roman noted how an effective irrigation system in the country could greatly improve food production, which is direly needed.
According to the lawmakers, the alarming food crisis in the country, particularly in the production and supply of rice, hounds not only the Philippines but the rest of the world.
Roman said the proposed measure seeks to ensure an effective irrigation system is in place to benefit farmers and make the supply of rice accessible to all.
“Not only will it benefit our farmers, but it will also enhance fish culture, control erosion and flooding and even generate local tourism,” she said.
Padilla, for his part said dams and irrigation systems are integral components of the storage and distribution of water to different farmlands.
“Insufficient supply of water results in an ineffective and inefficient irrigation system which in turn affects food production in the country,” he pointed out.
Padilla seeks to restore the sufficient water supply, saying “There is a need for the desiltation of dams and restoration of the watershed areas around these reservoirs.” Charlie V. Manalo
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