06/09/2008 [ tribune.net.ph ]
Malacañang is having second thought on whether to call for a special congressional session for the passage of a bill seeking to extend the implementation of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) Law.
The hesitation, according to Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Sergio Apostol, stemmed from the fact that a special session may not meet the required quorum as many legislators are now thinking of going out of the country once session adjourns on June 11.
“But if the session would be adjourned, that would mean rest days for our legislators and travel time. If there would be no one to attend, it (special session) will just be a waste of time,” he said.
But Apostol admitted even as Malacañang is considering calling a special session, it has yet to be officially discussed.
The Palace aide, however, said the bill extending CARP may still be passed at the next regular session along with other pending priority bills, adding despite not being immediately extended, the program’s implementation will go on as the national government had allocated a budget for it until this year.
“But acquiring new land properties would be temporarily stopped until the extension has been passed,” Apostol explained.
Malacañang also urged the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) to comply with the Senate’s request for it to submit an accomplishment report on the CARP’s implementation.
Senators earlier accused DAR of not submitting its report on the matter, thus delaying the passage of the program’s extension.
“It (DAR) should submit its report to justify the expansion,” Apostol said.
In view of the pending expiration of CARP on June 10, President Arroyo last Tuesday certified as urgent House Bill no. 4044 or the Act Sustaining the Implementation of CARP for its Beneficiaries.
Farmers earlier slammed Speaker Prospero Nograles and other members of Congress for allegedly blocking the CARP’s extension, stressing the program’s expiration will also cut the benefits due its farmer beneficiaries.
House Bill 4077 provides for subsidized credit for agrarian reform beneficiaries, recognition of women as CARP beneficiaries, recognition of the indefeasibility of emancipation patents and certificates of land ownership awards and upholding of the exclusive jurisdiction of the DAR over agrarian-related disputes.
To date, the DAR has yet to distribute some 200,000 hectares of land covered by the CARP.
Meanwhile, an administration senator said calls for special sessions by Congress would not ensure the passage the law extending CARP.
“Special sessions will not cure it. The problem is the fact that there’s not enough documentation by the DAR. We cannot just approve it, even after observing the conduct of public hearings, and enact it into law just like that,” Sen. Joker Arroyo said in an interview over dzBB.
But the lawmaker was quick in clarifying that he supports the said law.
He pointed out there is still a lot of work needed before members of the chamber could fully debate on the floor whether to approve the program’s extension.
Arroyo lambasted those criticizing Congress for supposedly sleeping on their job on the CARP law, pointing out Sen. Gregorio Honasan who is the chairman of the committee on agrarian reform, has been conducting public hearing for quite sometime now while those rallying behind the measure have come out only recently.
“The question here is, where were you when we were having hearings in the Senate? Why didn’t you attend our hearings? That includes the CBCP (Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines) and other bishops… Now that we’re nearing adjournment… Why didn’t they go to the Senate?” he asked.
The senator said the measure had been the subject of seven public hearings, four of which were conducted by the technical working group and proceedings held one each in Northern Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao.
“And the documentation, the statistics of DAR does not tally with the statistics of the NGOs (non-government organization). So how do you decide that? As between the data of DAR and NGOs, they should be in our hearings to reconcile these data, to see how much was spent,” he said.
Earlier, Senate minority leader Aquilino Pimentel Jr. threw support to the proposed special session.
Pimentel said this will give the Arroyo administration and the DAR additional time to explain how billions of pesos in public funds were spent on the CARP – a condition imposed by the Senate minority bloc for supporting a bill extending the implementation of the program.
He added the extra session days may perhaps also enable the Senate to inquire anew into the fertilizer fund scam in view of the impending deportation of its suspected principal perpetrator – former Agriculture Undersecretary Jocelyn “Joc Joc” Bolante – from the United States.
The fertilizer fund was allegedly diverted to Mrs. Arroyo’s election campaign kitty during the 2004 presidential elections.
Pimentel said he is still awaiting the full disclosure and accounting by the DAR, under Secretary Nasser Pangandaman, on how it utilized the P50-billion funding for the CARP, over the last 10 years of its implementation (from 1998 to 2008).
The funds disbursed for CARP include the P30-billion share of the Marcos bank deposits recovered from Switzerland.
