The government's bogus and inutile land reform program
The bogus nature of the reactionary state's Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) is increasingly coming to light. After 17 years, peasants are as landless and as poor as ever, including the supposed beneficiaries of the government's land reform program.
No less than a study by the Department of Land Reform (DLR) in April reveals that the CARP is sham, inutile and going nowhere in its avowed goal of liberating the peasantry from poverty and feudal exploitation.
The DLR's statistics indicate that the earnings of peasants in CARP lands continue to decline. From 1990 to 2000, the incomes of peasants under CARP fell by 8.9%. DLR estimates place their earnings at `66,000 annually, with only half sourced from agricultural production.
If the DLR is to be believed, the government has distributed up to 3.5 million hectares, or 82% of the targeted 4.3 million hectares since CARP's implementation. In fact, however, as peasants have repeatedly stressed, most of the lands that were allegedly distributed were public lands that they have long been tilling and developing. The truth is that only 1.5 million hectares�which comprises only a small proportion of private lands�has been subjected to CARP. Eighty percent of these are coconut lands, 15% sugar cane fields and 5% commercial farms.
Landlords have retained control over thousands of hectares of land where the peasant masses suffer cruel exploitation and poverty. Landlords have been able to use various provisions of the land reform law to perpetuate control over their feudal property.
One such provision is the "stock distribution option" (SDO) scheme where landlords distribute corporate shares of stock instead of land. It is one of the main policies that the Cojuangco family has exploited to retain control over its large landholdings in Hacienda Luisita, and one which farm workers at the hacienda have been fighting. They have called for its abrogation and have demanded that the land be distribution directly to the peasants. Their intense struggle has compelled the DLR to review 13 other cases of SDO.
Worse, most of the lands that were supposed to have been distributed have since reverted or are in the process of being reverted to the landlords through the cancellation of certificates of land ownership award (CLOA), emancipation patents (EP) and certificates of land transfer (or CLTs, from Marcos' agrarian reform program) issued to beneficiaries because of their failure to keep up with the monthly payments. In 2000, according to incomplete data from the DLR, 1,892 EPs and CLOAs covering 375,000 hectares of land had already been cancelled. However, another study states that as early as 1999, there were 32,598 EPs and CLOAs already cancelled. The actual number is no doubt bigger.
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