PHILIPPINE REAL ESTATE and RELATED NEWS in and around the country . . .
.
.

Bishop urges GMA to call special House session for CARP extension

06/07/2008 [ tribune.net.ph ]

A Catholic bishop yesterday dared President Arroyo to call a special session of Congress following the chamber’s failure to pass the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) extension bill.

Manila Auxiliary Bishop Broderick Pabillo, chairman of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines-National Secretariat for Social Action, said ordering the majority bloc in the House of Representatives to convene for a special session can prove Mrs. Arroyo’s sincerity in implementing genuine land reform.

The President on Tuesday certified the bill as urgent.

Despite hailing Mrs. Arroyo’s move, Pabillo said the President should do more to ensure the extension of the program.

“This doesn’t end with her certification of the bill as urgent. If possible, she should call a special session so that the CARP extension could be passed.” he said.

The 20-year-old CARP will expire on June 10 while the Congress is set to go on recess on June 13.

Akbayan party-list Rep. Risa Hontiveros, for her part, said calling a special session is not without a precedent, saying Mrs. Arroyo had already done it before.

“She has no reason not to call for a special session because she herself certified it as urgent. She has done this before just like when the national budget for 2007 was passed,” she stressed.

Pabillo also expressed disappointment over the continuous delay in the bill’s passage in Congress, saying debates have not yet touched the merits of the proposed law.

“We can see that quorum is their only problem. It has been long delayed even the proposed law’s credits haven’t been discussed. This is very sad we think it is both a delaying tactic and lack of interest on the part of lawmakers because if they are really interested, you will attend to the issue. We do not know if the congressmen see the value of the bill as we see it,” he said.

Deliberations on the bill failed to push through after Rep. Alfredo MaraƱon III questioned the quorum. This resulted in a dramatic protest by more than 100 farmers in front of House Speaker Prospero Nograles.

“They were deeply disappointed that despite the certification from MalacaƱang and the assurance from Speaker Nograles that the bill would be passed before the recess, the quorum was once again questioned by a member of the Negros bloc,” Hontiveros said.

Pabillo said the storming of Nograles’ office is a sign how serious the issue on land reform is for the farmers.

Meanwhile, incoming Anakpawis party-list Rep. Rafael Mariano yesterday said the bill will not rectify the inherent anti-farmer and pro-landlord character of CARP as he called on Congress to give due consideration to House Bill 3059 or the proposed “Genuine Agrarian Reform Act.”

“The so-called reforms under the proposed bill to grant another five-year lease in life to the government’s 20-year-old CARP are mere decorations aimed to resurrect a dead program,” Mariano said, adding “Even if extended, CARP remains to be a bogus agrarian program.”

He blamed the CARP for continued threats of displacement and land-grabbing on tens of thousands of farmers and farm workers in Hacienda Luisita in Tarlac, Haciendas Looc and Roxas in Batangas, Haciendas San Antonio and Sta. Isabel in Isabela among others.

“All these cases arose from CARP and range from the cancellation and confiscation of so-called certificates of land ownership, land-use conversions, crops conversion, non-land distribution schemes like the notorious stock distribution option, up to forcible and barefaced land-grabbing. Pat C. Santos and Charlie V. Manalo

_______________________________________________________________________

real estate central philippines
Copyright ©2008-2020