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Here are some basic information on CARPER (CARP Extension with Reform Bill), from the Lupang Hinarang website:
Actually, the original law enacted in 1988 was CARP or Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program. It aspired to advance social justice by equitably distributing the country's disproportionately owned agricultural lands. This would have reduced rural poverty which makes up 70% of the Philippine's poor population. Also, it aimed to make our agriculture efficient by ensuring all agricultural land in the country is tilled and farmed. By minimizing inequality and maximizing agricultural productivity, which by the way is our economy's foundation, economic and social progress would have come a lot sooner in our history.
CARP obliges landowners to sell all their arable land possessions exceeding 5 hectares. They may also keep 3 hectares of land for each of their children who are personally managing or tilling the land. If they make it easier for the government and volunteer to sell their lands, they will even receive incentives. The landowners may sell their land to the government, which the government will sell to the farmers and farm workers. Within 30 years and with 6% annual interest rate, the payment for the newly acquired land should be completed by the farmers. The landowners may also opt to transact directly with their tenants who till and farm the land. State-owned agricultural lands are also subjected to CAPR.
The law states that CARP should be fully implemented in 10 years, meaning it should have been completed by 1998. However, the Department of Agrarian Reform failed to beat this deadline, so the program and the budget for it were extended for 10 more years. By the end of 2008, 80% of the privately owned agricultural lands have not yet been distributed. This is why and how CARPER came to be. CARP Extension with Reforms clamors for continuing budget for the program, and reforms to repair the loopholes in CARP which have weakened it for the last 20 years.
There can be a thousand reasons to delay CARP's fulfillment, all boiling down to frail political will.
For the last 2 decades, the Department of Agrarian reform has prioritized distributing state-owned agricultural lands instead of the privately owned ones--even though the law specifies that the latter should be distributed first. Lots of exemptions have been given to powerful landlords to spare their lands from the program. Titles already won by would-be beneficiaries are canceled and decisions favoring them are reversed. Illegal conversions of agricultural lands to non-agricultural purposes are allowed. Huge parts of agricultural lands are sold and distributed to 'ghost' buyers. Farmers and land workers are fooled to sign agreements making them stockholders of the land, which technically disqualifies them from owning the lands directly. Many farmers now have Certificates of Land Ownership Award in their hands. Unfortunately, landlords are armed with guns, practically paralyzing the farmers' rights. Some farmer beneficiaries have been shot for tilling the lands they rightfully own.
A program can be incredibly difficult to complete if it is done half-heartedly. The saying hits it: 'Pag gusto, may paraan. 'Pag ayaw, may dahilan.
Well, another generation of rural population will again inherit the enslaving fate of poverty. This will happen despite the farmers' lawful claim to the lands and despite the cause that has consumed their energies all their lives. It has been a cycle and if it is not cut now, who knows when it will end? Or if it ever will.
Unfortunately for us too, this mishap leads to a butterfly effect. Bigger population of the poor stands for an underdeveloped economy. High disproportion of ownership of resources logically reduces national productivity. Imagine an agricultural country occasionally experiencing rice shortages.We are continuously left behind by our industrialized neighbors such as Japan and Taiwan. Cost of living rises as stomachs growl louder. We export our family members instead of selling our crops abroad. Blatant breach of the law further affirms the death of democracy. Sounds like the absence of CARPER can devastate the country? It has been happening.
CARP has so far distributed 7.2 million hectares of agricultural land to the farmers. It has lifted the lives of 4.5 million Filipinos from intolerable poverty. CARPER, on the other hand, pushes to extend what CARP has done and to distribute the remaining 1.3 million hectares of privately owned lands to the farmers who make them productive.
This move has been brought to Congress and the Senate for some time now and has been ignored until the last 2 days of legislative sessions in 2008. When the legislators gave some attention to CARPER's propositions at last, they came up with an ingenious way of killing it. The Congress and the Senate signed a joint resolution extending CARP but without compulsory acquisition. It means that the program may go on but the landowners may or may not sell their lands. It's the landowners' call. For whom is the program again?
This joint resolution has just plucked CARPER's fangs. It has trimmed and buffed its claws and has taken away the heart of real agrarian reform. Meanwhile landless farmers walk miles to protest and hold weeks of hunger strikes to be heard.
The pseudo-CARPER is effective until June 2009. President Arroyo and the lawmakers have until then to redeem their purpose as representatives of the people. The farmers can still hope and fight for justice. We can still do our part in rewriting our nation's history of poverty and injustice. Speak up, stand up, and show the government that we are fools no more. Let us push for CARPER. Now.
At the same time, concrete ways to support CARPER are also available from the Lupang Hinarang website.
Check out also this a statement from a group of Law Student Councils, which also builds the case for supporting CARPER:
WE KNOW THAT THE LAW IS ON THE FARMERS’ SIDE.
Joint Resolution No. 19, which extends the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program but without providing for compulsory acquisition, expires on June 30. On June 5, however, the second regular session of Congress will end, resuming only on the first week of July. This means that despite months of campaigning and lobbying for a struggle that has spanned decades, and because of the indifference or neglect of our representatives in Congress, we are again in the eleventh hour, with only nine session days left to pass a law that is not only constitutionality mandated, but is required by basic notions of equity and social justice.
The implementation of an agrarian reform program is a Constitutional mandate which the State may not avoid by legislative inaction. Section 4, Art. XIII of the 1987 Constitution requires the State to “undertake an agrarian reform program founded on the right of farmers and regular farmworkers who are landless, to own directly or collectively the lands they till or, in the case of other farmworkers, to receive a just share of the fruits thereof.” As it is, Joint Resolution No. 19 is unconstitutional for being contrary to the very spirit of agrarian reform. If Congress again fails to pass an agrarian reform law by June 5, it will be nothing short of a dereliction of a duty reposed on the legislative body by our Constitution.
The CARP has been in existence for 20 years, but the fruits of authentic agrarian reform in the country have yet to be reaped. 80% of privately owned agricultural lands remain undistributed. 18% of CARP beneficiaries have not received titles to the lands that they till and should rightfully own. 65% of CARP beneficiaries have no access to government support services that should be available in agrarian reform areas. Rural poverty still accounts for 70% of the country’s poor. If we are to attain social justice eloquently defined by Justice Jose P. Laurel in Calalang vs. Williams as “…the humanization of laws and the equalization of social and economic forces by the State…” then agrarian reform is a measure that must not only be continued, but must be among those prioritized.
The Philippine’s agrarian reform program needs to be given more time to fully attain the goals it was created to accomplish. Twenty years of unsatisfactory implementation clearly leaves much room for improvement and reform. House Bill 4077 and Senate Bill 2666, or the CARP Extension with Reforms Bill, reflect the needed changes to address the shortcomings that have prevented the law’s noble purpose from coming into fruition.
We, who study the law, know that laws are there for a reason. Agrarian reform is explicitly identified as a fundamental State policy in Art II Sec 21 of the Constitution. Thus, we ask that our lawmakers breathe life into this policy by enacting laws that set in motion and ensure actual and speedy results.
We, who study the law, know that while the actual provisions are drafted by the members of Congress, laws are ultimately articulations of the people’s will and expressions of the power inherent in them as citizens of a free country. Thus, we remind our lawmakers that their mandate emanates from the people, and their duty is to address their constituents’ needs, even if it means sacrificing their own interests. We reiterate that by eliminating compulsory acquisition, the agrarian reform program is reduced to no more than an empty promise. Without it, there is no reform, only more of the same.
We, who study the law, are no strangers to policies that look resolute on paper, but are torn apart and rendered useless by the selfsame provisions, where motherhood statements mask gaps, loopholes and false pretenses. Thus, we demand that Congress deliver an agrarian reform program that is responsive, sincere and faithful to the principles of social justice.
The second regular session of Congress ends in less than a month. Too much has been lost, too much sacrificed and there is too much at stake for our legislature to fail us now. We take up this cause because we, who study the law, owe it to this country. We owe it to the farmers who walked thousands of miles, and spent weeks in hunger strikes, asking to be heard. We owe it to the blood shed and lives lost. We owe it to the law that we study and pledge to serve. Because if the law cannot be used to protect those who need it the most, then it betrays its own purpose.
TIME IS RUNNING OUT! PASS THE CARPER BILLS (HB 4077 and SB 2666) NOW!!
May 18, 2009
Signed (in alphabetical order):
Student Council
Ateneo Law School
Makati City, Metro Manila
Supreme Law Council
College of Law
Silliman University
Dumaguete City, Oriental Negros
Student Council
College of Law
University of Baguio
Baguio City, Benguet
Civil Law Student Council
College of Law
University of Santo Tomas
Manila City, Metro Manila
Law Student Government
College of Law
University of the Philippines
Quezon City, Metro Manila
