December 21, 2008

With the passage of a joint resolution by Congress extending an even more brazenly pro-landlord Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), multisectoral group Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan) today urged all Filipino farmers to further boost their collective strength in the countryside to enforce genuine agrarian reform.

“The legislative arena is just one field of struggle by farmers and advocates of genuine agrarian reform. Indeed, the battleground is far wider than the halls of a landlord-dominated Congress. It is in the remotest barangays in the countryside where farmers and farm workers should collectively struggle against oppression and exploitation that stem from landlord domination,” Bayan chairperson Dr. Carol Pagaduan-Araullo said.

Araullo said that a strong, independent peasant movement, with unwavering support from other oppressed sectors of society, is the best hope for genuine agrarian reform in the country.

The House of Representatives and Senate last week passed a joint resolution extending CARP for another six months after its expires by yearend. But the extension will cover only lands that landlords will voluntarily offer to sell and excluded compulsory acquisition.

“Is twenty-years of CARP not enough to show that the program has simply legitimized land monopoly and outright grabbing? If CARP is effective, then why is it that until today, two-thirds of the peasantry are still landless and consequently, almost two-thirds of the Filipino poor are in the rural areas?” asked Araullo.

The Bayan leader reiterated the need for an entirely new program that will truly meet the aspiration of farmers to own and control the land they till. Such is the Genuine Agrarian Reform Bill (GARB) being pushed by progressive partylists Anakpawis, Bayan Muna (BM), and Gabriela Women’s Party (GWP).

“The latest episode in the peasants’ and people’s struggle for genuine agrarian reform has again taught us that fundamental policy reforms will not be given on a silver platter. Land to the tillers can only be a product of painstaking work and collective, direct political actions by peasants and the people as a whole,” Araullo added.

Bayan said it will continue supporting all efforts to implement a genuine agrarian reform program because it is the key to the country’s national industrialization and overall economic development. (END)