Friday, June 6, 2008 [ philstar.com ]
The bill extending the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) faces rough sailing in the Senate even though President Arroyo has certified as urgent House Bill 4077.
Pro-administration stalwart Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile has joined the increasing number of senators reluctant to extend CARP, insisting that the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) must provide the Senate with a full report on the program’s beneficiaries since its implementation in 1988.
Enrile also challenged the proponents of CARP’s extension to a debate on the efficiency of the program and whether productivity on CARP distributed lands has increased or diminished.
After 20 years, CARP expires this month.
Enrile echoed Senate minority leader Aquilino Pimentel Jr.’s suggestion for a full accounting of the vast tracts of land that were classified under the CARP and if these lands were appropriate for food production.
Speaker Prospero Nograles, on the other hand, yesterday vowed the House of Representatives would approve the CARP five-year extension bill next week.
“I am committed to pass the bill and the House will pass it before we adjourn on June 13. My support for CARP’s extension is non-negotiable,” Nograles said in a text message.
He made the assurance after his chamber failed to approve the measure on Wednesday night despite his efforts to fast-track its consideration and approval.
Such efforts were frustrated by a colleague from the majority, Negros Occidental Rep. Alfredo Maranon III, who questioned the quorum. Since there were insufficient members in the House session hall, the session was adjourned.
Shortly after adjournment, more than 100 farmers, who had been watching the proceedings, trooped to Nograles’ office where they held a sit-down protest.
The Speaker, who had already left the House premises, returned and told them “their protest is unnecessary and premature considering the fact that the bill is already in its final stage of approval in the House.”
Rep. Risa Hontiveros of Akbayan, one of the CARP extension bill’s co-authors, did not share the Speaker’s optimism about the approval of the measure next week.
Hontiveros said the House would hold session only from Tuesday through Thursday, Monday being a non-working holiday, and normally, congressmen leave Metro Manila for their districts on Thursdays.
She then suggested the holding of a special session to tackle the bill, a move supported by Bishop Brodrick Pabillo, chairman of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines’ social arm, the National Secretariat for Social Action-Justice and Peace (NASSA).
Agrarian Reform Secretary Nasser Pangandaman, for his part, said even if Congress fails to act on the proposed CARP extension, the government’s land reform scheme would still be able to proceed but only until the end of the year.
To dispute claims by critics that CARP has not improved the lives of its beneficiaries, Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman, the extension bill’s principal author, cited studies by the University of the Philippines in Los Baños that poverty incidence in communities populated by agrarian reform beneficiaries decreased from 40 percent to 25 percent between 1990 and 2000. - With Jess Diaz, Evelyn Macairan, Katherine Adraneda
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