[ Source : Published by : manilastandardtoday.com (Jan. 24, 2008) ]
Author : Macon Ramos Araneta
CARP will be supported by adequate production credits to defeat poverty in the country, De Venecia said.
“We will exert collective efforts to extend the life of the CARP with all the necessary reforms, funding and support services needed to make it a success,” De Venecia said after the three-hour bishops-lawmakers roundtable discussion on agrarian reform at the Pope Pius XII Catholic Center in Manila.
Archbishop Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales and Archbishop Angel Lagdameo, president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, led 40 bishops at the consultation series.
De Venecia vowed to work for the extension of CARP, which will expire on June 30, and plug the loopholes that weaken the program.
But Bayan Muna Reps. Satur Ocampo and Teddy Casino opposed the extension of the land reform program. They asked for the enactment of an entirely new measure that would give free land to deserving farmers.
The party-list lawmakers branded CARP as pro-landlord and said the 20-year-old program failed to uplift the lives of millions of landless peasants.
Ocampo and Casino, along with Anakpawis Rep. Crispin Beltran and Reps. Liza Maza and Luz Ilagan of Gabriela have filed House bill 3059 which proposes the creation of GARA as replacement for CARL, the law implementing the agrarian reform.
Casino said his group will insist in the next hearing that the debate is shifted from whether CARL should be extended or not to whether CARL should be replaced by GARA.
The issue, he said, is whether we need to extend a failed program or enact an entirely new one that would better address the needs of our landless farmers.
“At the heart of a genuine agrarian reform program would be the free distribution of land to the landless. Otherwise, if you require them to pay for the land, they will end up just as poor and oppressed as ever. That is what 20 years of CARL has proved,” Casino said.
But De Venecia said that deeper reforms are needed to ensure the success of CARP.
Conceding that agriculture is the “stepchild” of the Philippine economy, De Venecia said CARP must provide for adequate production credit, post-harvest facilities and marketing program to ensure that the farmers’ produce are bought at fair prices.
One major reform area in the CARP is to allow farmers to use the lands awarded to them as collateral when procuring loans from banks, De Venecia said.
Banks do not honor the lands acquired by the farmers as loan collaterals.
De Venecia said the House majority coalition supports the extension of the CARP law but warned of a stiff challenge by landowners who believe the law’s extension would only result in failure.
He said that the country’s farmers could end up like those in Colombia and other Latin American countries, Myanmar and Afghanistan, where farmlands have been converted into opium and marijuana plantations, should the agrarian fail.
He lauded the micro-finance program being implemented by the government and the Catholic Church in various parts of the country extending production capital to farmers without requiring collateral.
Deputy Minority Leader Rufus Rodriguez and Rep. Lorenzo Tañada III, chairman of the House committee on human rights, confirmed that the minority in the House will vote with the majority coalition to ensure the success of the agrarian reform program.
They said that agrarian reform concerns all Filipinos regardless of party affiliation.
The Speaker was accompanied by 14 lawmakers led by House appropriations chairman Edcel Lagman. Agriculture Chairman Abraham Khalil Mitra and during the roundtable discussion in consonance with the continuing bishops-legislators’ caucus.
Due to time constraint, with the CARP law expiring in five months, Lagman said it would be best to work for the extension of the law and address the reforms later on. "
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