Friday, June 06, 2008 [ manilatimes.net ]
By Jomar Canlas, Reporter
Speaker Prospero Nograles Jr. assured on Thursday that the House of Representatives will approve a bill extending the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) for another five years before the chamber’s adjournment next week.
If Congress fails to pass the bill extending CARP before the recess that starts on June 13, then President Gloria Arroyo should call a special session, a church official and a party-list lawmaker said also on Thursday.
Nograles posed no objection to a special session, which he said will give the Senate more time to pass its counterpart measure.
The Senate, however, has not begun committee deliberations on its version of the bill.
“We are rushing the approval of the proposal on the CARP extension, but we also don’t want to compromise the quality of the measure that will emanate from the House. We want to cure the defects of the previous CARP Law,” Nograles said.
According to the House Speaker, plugging loopholes in the original agrarian reform law will truly benefit farmers especially and help the government’s programs to achieve food sufficiency.
Nograles said it would be disastrous if the CARP-extension bill is put to a vote without assurance of majority support for it.
“There are more than 200 congressmen who may have different views. If we force a vote without the necessary numbers, all the hard work exerted on this bill will just go to waste. We will be back to zero,” he added.
Nograles appealed to the Department of Agrarian Reform to impose a moratorium on the conversion of all arable lands while the extension of CARP is being worked out.
“We should also ensure that we don’t just give out lands for the sake of compliance with the law but we should also make sure that the intended beneficiaries are given adequate support to boost food production,” he said.
Major recommendations
Nograles batted for recommended amendments to the original CARP law of 1988: repeal of the stock distribution option which favors big farm lands; making a priority the granting of individual land titles to all beneficiaries; acceleration of compulsory acquisition of land rather than voluntary offer to sell or transfer; increase in budgetary allocation for support services and development of human capital; revitalization of the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council by appointing an undersecretary for the council; streamlining of the Agrarian-Reform department’s top-heavy bureaucracy; harmonization of strategies or activities in agrarian-reform communities among the Department of Agriculture, Department of Environment and Natural Resources, local government units and the private sector; making credit available and accessible to CARP beneficiaries; and exploration of other options or programs for land reform in sugar and coconut lands as these farms require different technologies and market inputs.
These changes were suggested by the Congressional Oversight Committee on Agricultural and Fisheries Modernization headed by Palawan Rep. Abraham Mitra and Aurora Rep. Juan Edgardo Angara.
Bishop Broderick Pabillo and Akbayan party-list Rep. Risa Hontiveros-Baraquel noted that the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program will expire on June 10 but Congress ends its session on June 12.
Pabillo, the head of the social and justice arm of the influential Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, said President Arroyo calling a special session will demonstrate her “seriousness” in extending the agrarian-reform program.
Hontiveros, the deputy leader of the House minority, claimed during a press conference that Mrs. Arroyo’s partymates are “the ones delaying the [passage of the CARP-extension] bill.”
The President this week certified the bill as “urgent.” --With Anthony Vargas
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