Leftwing groups advise Sumilao farmers to be wary of Arroyo

By Jerome Aning

Inquirer

Last updated 08:52pm (Mla time) 12/17/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- Leftwing groups have warned farmers from Sumilao, Bukidnon, who met President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo at Malacañang on Monday, to be wary of her promises and not to allow themselves to be used.

The peasant group Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (Peasant Movement of the Philippines) and the fisherfolk alliance Pambansang Lakas ng Kilusang Mamamalakaya ng Pilipinas (National Movement of Fishers of the Philippines) said the Sumilao farmers' land problem might be used by those advocating the extension of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program, funding for which was due to expire in the middle of 2008.

“The Sumilao farmers should be very careful in dealing with the President and opportunist groups because they are really hell bent in extending CARP considering that it is one of their primary cash cows,” KMP chair Rafael Mariano said.

From 1998 to 2006, he said, more than P119 billion was released for the implementation of CARP, excluding the millions in pesos that came from the European Union and the World Bank for its implementation.

“Where has all this money gone? Most of these were pocketed,” he said.

Pamalakaya said the farmers might only end up “victimized by false hopes and empty promises” which were usually offered by the government to appease angry landless farmers.

“We ask our struggling Sumilao farmers not to put premium or political weight on (Arroyo’s) statements. She might just use the meeting as another political event for an all-out publicity stunt,” Pamalakaya chair Fernando Hicap said in a statement.

According to Hicap, the root of the Sumilao farmers’ problem is the “unholy political alliance” between Arroyo and the influential Eduardo “Danding” Cojuangco, the majority owner of the food and beverage giant San Miguel Corporation. Hicap said Cojuangco’s party, the Nationalist People’s Coalition, consistently refused to support the impeachment complaints against the President.

“The President currently in political partnership with the Cojuangco camp is behind the present predicament faced by struggling Sumilao farmers. The peasants’ right to land is again sacrificed at the altar of political accommodation that is championed by Malacañang,” Hicap added.

“The President can't say no to Cojuangco’s plan to take over the 144-hectare Sumilao farms because he has been supporting her administration. That’s why Malacañang and the Department of Agrarian Reform can’t decide on the case of Sumilao farmers,” Hicap said.

Pamalakaya said the Sumilao farmers “are facing their biggest class battle this time, because they have to smash a powerful political collaboration.” The meeting “will have no bearing at all or will not affect the decision of the DAR to allow the conversion of land into a hog farm,” according to Pamalakaya.

Mariano said he expected the President and other Malacañang officials to “just issue motherhood statements and not address the peasantry’s woes.”

The KMP urged the Sumilao farmers to instead support the radical Genuine Agrarian Reform Bill KMP has been pushing in Congress. Mariano said farmers would face “massive landlessness” in a CARP extension. KMP’s GARB proposes to nationalize all agricultural lands and turn them over to farmers for free.

To date, he said, seven out of 10 farmers did not own the land they tilled. In some regions like Central Luzon, Southern Tagalog and Southern Mindanao Region, eight out of 10 farmers are not owners of the land they have been farming.

“CARP has not solved the basic problem of landlessness of peasants and in fact made it worse,” he said.

The peasant leader reminded the farmers that CARP itself was used to evict them from their land.

“The landlords used the CARP provision under Section 3, stating the definition of agricultural land and as implemented by Department of Justice Opinion 44, that a land which was already reclassified before CARP’s implementation is exempted from its coverage” Mariano recalled.

He added that certificates of land transfer (CLT), emancipation patents (EP) and certificates of land ownership award (CLOA) were not guarantees that farmers owned the lands they were awarded under CARP.

In 2004 alone, KMP said more than 2,000 CLOAs and EPs were cancelled, covering around 380,000 hectares.

“Big landlords and corporations like Eduardo 'Danding' Cojuangco and San Miguel Corp. are also using CARP to further expand their land at the expense of farmers and they will do everything to evict peasants from their lands. The hacienda of the Arroyos in Negros has not even been touched by CARP,” added the peasant leader.

Mariano said no amount of amendments could correct the “inherent pro-landlord and anti-peasant character of CARP,” adding, “We must not let the CARP to further bastardize the welfare of peasants in the country.”