Vol 41, No 6 JUNE 2007

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Quote in the Act

I know I will never take a glass of water for granted again.

Hilary Swank, one-time best-actress Oscar winner, launched June 1 an around-the-world relay race to raise money and awareness to 1.1 billion people without safe drinking water.

ISSN 0300-4155 Asian Magazine for Human Transformation Through Education, Social Advocacy and Evangelization
P.O. Box 2481, 1099 Manila, Philippines

IMPACT
REMITTING ADDRESSES

Copyright 1974 by Social Impact Foundation, Inc.

We are not a heartless people.

Helen Clark, New Zealand Prime Minister, berating an electric companys decision to disconnect the home of a woman on oxygen machine, with an unpaid bill of 168.40 New Zealand dollars (1232 US D); the 44-year-old mother died 2 hours later.

We are shamed and saddened by comments that our country ranks among those with most records of graft and corruption, unresolved cases of heinous crimes and mysterious disappearances and unabated extra-judicial killings.
Archbishop Angel Lagdameo, President of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, in a recent statement on the occasion of the June 12 Philippine Independence Day observance.

Junta get out

Protesters, sporting yellow banners and head gears with this text; thousands of anti-coup demonstrators gathered at Sanam Luang Plaza in central Bangkok June 3, urging an end to the military-installed government.

Almost all the products that were worn by her in ads have been sold out.
Min Se-Joung, Fila Korea marketing director, after pulling out in South Korea all TV commercials and print ads of Paris Hilton who was sentenced to 45-day jail term for insisting to drive in the US without license.

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Id say 80-85 percent of politicians would be corrupt stinking corrupt.

Hasan Mashhud Chowdhury, a widely respected retired lieutenant general who runs the governments Anti-Corruption Commission, in a recent effort of crushing corruption in one of the worlds corrupt nations; the military is surprisingly one of the few powerful institutions seen as relatively clean.

Without Sunday, without the Eucharist the Christians in Iraq cannot survive
Father Ragheed Aziz Ganni, said this of his communitys hope, a community that was used to facing death on a daily basisthat same death that on June 3, 2007 faced him in a massacre together with some subdeacons while on their way home after celebrating the eucharist in Mosul, Iraq.

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IMPACT June 2007

IMPAC T

June 2007 / Vol 41 No 6

CONTENTS
EDITORIAL

ASKED to comment about the last midterm elections, one archbishop was overheard as saying, it was very peaceful, the vote buying was so peaceful. He said it as calmly as one would with a tinge of resignation after a long battle with a system that has never, and probably will never ever, budged. Our volunteers were very frustrated, said another bishop. The vote-shaving, the killings and ingenious ways of cheating aside, even just the making of a simple voters list to order the COMELEC could not do. In a precinct near the central COMELEC headquarters in Intramuros, it took me an hour and a half (and a couple of arguments) to find my namein a barangay with just about three hundred or so voters. There are 3 years in between elections, why cant COMELEC put the voters list to order? Cellphone companies in the country have subscribers twice more than the registered voters. And yet names are listed with admirable precision so that when you pay your phone bills over the counter, it just takes a split-second to get all your billing data to the last detail up to the name of your father who has decided to rest to thy-kingdom-come. This is neither inefficiency nor indolence. This is an agenda, a political mechanism so that disenfranchisements and technical cheating would be as easy as making perspiring and lining-up voters splendidly stupid. And this is not talking yet about the likes of Maguindanao or Lanao where electoral schemes are hatched years ahead. Or of the clones of garci and the jueteng money that operates as smoothly as a doublefaced commissioner. Unless this countrys electoral system is reformed nothing else will ever be reformed. For, why will I have the guts to give credence to a president or her subalterns if she herself had been a fruit of a rotten, hence heavily doubtful, electoral processeven if they promise reforms to the high heavens? This issue opens with Sister Aida Velasquez, OSB, talking about climate change. Without being alarmist, this is an issue that should not be taken for granted due the impending effects of global warming. But most of the discussion in this volume is about the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) of the government. And how we wish there were more pages to accommodate more submissions on the issue. After 19 yearsand thats a year before its scheduled maturityhas CARP ever made a dint? Can anybody call it a success or a rueful failure? Does it need to be extended after its expiration next year or shall it naturally fold up and courageously accept its deformities? Answers do not come easyespecially when you now reckon with hundreds of lives murdered under the aegis of CARP, and familiesespecially of helpless farmerswasted to naught. Read on.

Carping Up and Away .................................................. 23

COVER STORY

Twenty Years of CARP: What Has Been Achieved and How? ...................................................................... 16
ARTICLES

Facing Climate Change Together ................................ 4 CARP in Cojuangco Lands: Of Great Dreams and Blood Spilt! ...................................................................... 6 GMAs Reform Paradigm Will End Equity and Justice-based CARP ....................................................... 8 Renewed Confidence and Hope Among Peasants: The Landmark Legal Victory of the Beneficiaries of Hacienda Maria ........................................................... 10 Rural Empowerment through Agrarian Development: The Victorious Struggle of Peasants in Central Luzon ........................................................ 12 Has CARP Really Helped the Farmers? ................... 14 Land Reform Struggles of Bondoc Peninsula Tenants ...................................................... 20 Salvaging our Politics ................................................... 22
DEPARTMENTS

Quote in the Act ................................................................ 2 From the Blogs ................................................................ 25 News Features ................................................................ 26 From the Inbox ............................................................... 28 Book Reviews .................................................................. 29 CINEMA Review ........................................................... 30 Quotes in Quiz ................................................................ 30 News Briefs ...................................................................... 31
Volume 41 Number 6

Cover photo by Denz Dayao

ARTICLES
Roy Lagarde / IMPACT

Facing Climate Change Together

By Sr. Ma. Aida Velasquez, OSB ur beautiful and bountiful earth is now facing the scourge of a global economy that has been operating at the cost of the destruction of the life support systems of our planet leaving teeming billions of people poor. There have been movements to change this situation and demands to change this global economic pattern. Voices have been raised to warn world leaders and communities of this ecological crisis since the late 80s. People, old and young, have been told that the temperature of the earth is rising. That this will melt the ice in the polar regions and that there will be a rise in sea level. Scientists have warned that a rise in temperature can lead to extremes of weather. There can be more frequent and stronger typhoons accompanied by flooding. More incidents and longer periods of drought can

occur. These will affect food supply from the land and from the sea. New diseases may be triggered; there may be resurgence of those that may have been eliminated in the past like tuberculosis and malaria. Many species of plants and animals will disappear. In 2001, UN Environment Programme (UNEP) Executive Director Klaus Topfer referring to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said Intensive climate research and monitoring over the past few years has given scientists greater confidence in their understanding of the causes and effects of global warming. The scientific consensus presented in this comprehensive report about human-induced climate change should sound alarm bells in every national capital and in every local community.

Newspapers reported that global warming was more severe than scientists previously thought and the effects would endure for centuries according to a panel of UN experts. With the rise in global sea levels and temperatures there would be much pressure in agricultural production and strain on water resources. By early 2002, many started fearing that the drought, floods and rising sea levels due to warmer weather would create millions of refugees from drowning islandnations and possible wars over increasingly scarce fresh water. It was seen that economies would likely take a blow as farming, fishing and business would be affected by the change of climate. At the 12th Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (November 2006), many speakers

IMPACT June 2007

Facing Climate Change Together

pointed to the fact that climate change has been happening in the Artic, East Africa and the Pacific and many other parts of the world. They decried that those countries which contribute least to greenhouse gas emission stand to suffer the worst consequences of climate change. Recently the reality of climate change has been brought to millions of viewers through Al Gores very disturbing and terrifying documentary entitled, An Inconvenient Truththe melting of polar ice, ice shelf collapses, the inundation of coastal areas of several well-known places, incidents of polar bears swimming for long miles and then drowning because of thin ice sheets, newly hatched birds dying because their usual food is not available on time due to weather changes. Then some weeks ago a summary of the massive Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC reiterates: As a result of human activities the global atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide have markedly increased. The global increases in carbon dioxide concentration are due primarily to fossil fuel (oil, coal) and land-use changes, while those of methane and nitrous oxide are primarily due to agriculture. Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observation of increase in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice and rising global average sea level. More intense and longer droughts have been observed over wider areas since the 1970s, particularly in the tropics and subtropics The frequency of heavy precipitation events has increased over most land areas Widespread changes in extreme temperatures have been observed over the last 50 years. Cold days, cold nights and frost have become less frequent, while hot days, hot nights, and heat waves become more frequent The Report assesses the past and future impact of rising temperatures on the planets ecosystems and inhabitants. According to the report there will also be far-reaching consequences for the planets biodiversity. It predicted that a temperature rise of 1.5-2.5 degrees Celsius will threaten 20-30 percent of species. If temperatures rise by 4 degrees Celsius, few ecosystems will be able to adapt. The IPCC Fourth Assessment Report gave a projected average sea level rise at the end of the 21st century ranging from a low estimate of 0.18 to a high of 0.59 meter based on different scenarios. Keeping this in mind, it may be helpful to know that last April 2007 a report from Greenpeace warns that the entire Philippines is a climate hotspot and the country is vulnerable to the worst manifestations of climate change. Conservative estimates from Greenpeace foresee that a one-meter rise in sea level may affect 64 of the countrys 81 provinces, which cover at least 703 of the 1,610 municipalities and submerge almost 700 million square meters of land, tality. Serious efforts to do away with plastic bags, is a good indicator of this resolve. The problem of solid wastes in the country points to the enormity and difficulty of casting out the throw-away mentality. A much greater undertaking is rehabilitating, protecting and enhancing our ecosystems. Our decimated forests and degraded lowlands, coastal and marine areas and freshwater areas need all the attention and care that can be given them. This rainy season individuals, families and communities, who recently suffered from the many hot days, will be prudent and wise to plant trees and/or actively support groups committed to increasing the forest cover estimated in 1998 at 22.8%. Add to all these tasks the numerous issues like mining, genetic engineering/genetically engineered (modified) organisms (GEOs/GMOs), the Japan Philippine Economic Partnership Agreement, the Laiban Dam, etc. and advocacies for sustainable agriculture, food sovereignty, Indigenous Peoples, human rights, renewable energy, etc. At present numerous intermeshed socio-economic, political, cultural, ecological issues and activities are pursued separately. And to think that all these endeavors will be burdened and complicated all the more by the effects of climate change! While it is important to insist that our government honor its commitment to the Kyoto Protocol and demand that rich countries put in mitigation schemes to keep global temperature increases as low as possible, it is essential that sufficient time, resources and efforts are focused on what can keep our islands stable and sustainable. Certainly a comprehensive, integrated approach that can address the complex situation is imperative. More than ever there is need to change the present development paradigm. All kinds of compromises, especially by governments, have brought people to this wretched stage of our planet. As the grim reality of the consequences of global warming dawns on economists and governments, more voices are now heard calling for a shift to low carbon economy. And FAST! so as to avoid a much greater financial cost (and suffering ) of dilly-dallying and procrastination.
Facing p24

"In order to cope with the daunting prospects of climate change Filipinos need to discover the vision of a sustainable Philippines in the PA21, and creatively, diligently and painstakingly meet its challenge."
including islets, across the country. The Greenpeace study also identified the top 20 provinces in the country which are vulnerable to a one-meter rise in seal level. These are Sulu, Palawan, Zamboanga del Sur, Northern Samar, Zamboanga Sibugay, Basilan, Cebu, Davao del Norte, Bohol, Camarines Sur, Quezon, Tawi-Tawi, Masbate, Negros Occidental, Camarines Norte, Capiz, Catanduanes, Samar, Zamboanga del Norte, and Maguindanao. What can citizens do? What can each one of us do? There are lists of what everyone can do to save the Earth. Foremost are reducing consumption to what is necessary and conserving water and energy. We are reminded for years to reduce what we buy; reuse and recycle them. These actions can become habitual only when a person is driven by an inner urge to do her/his share in rehabilitating the Earth. Many have been inspired by the new story of creation which unravels, with the aid of scientific data, the story of the universe and how life has evolved. Accepting the story can mean doing something daily to help get rid of the throw-away men-

Volume 41 Number 6

ARTICLES

CARP in Cojuangco Lands:

Of Great Dreams and Blood Spilt!

As recounted by Evangeline Mendoza acienda de Los Reyes is approximately 246 hectares in land area, covering about half of Barangay Imok, in Calauan, Laguna. Its main product is coconut with vegetable and fruits such as rambutan, gabi, garlic, cassava, string beans, and peanuts as secondary crops. The estate was previously owned by Geronimo de Los Reyes, who died in 1988 and was inherited by the heiress Margarita Tingting de Los Reyes-Cojuangco, wife of Don Peping Cojuangco. At first, there were 15 farmer families who lived inside the hacienda as tenants and began planting coconut trees in the area. By the 19501960s, their number increased to about 67 families. Life inside the hacienda has been exploitative and unbearably tyrannical. The sharing arrangement between the landlord and the tenants was 70-30 in favor of the landowner. Basically, all movements in

the hacienda were controlled. Everyone will have to secure a gate pass to go to the uplands and harvest coconuts. Farmers were not allowed to grow animals for food or to augment their incomes. They could not even gather grasses as these were to be used in feeding the horses of the landowner. When they needed to see the Seora, they had to bring fruits with them and kneel as an obeisance to her authority. The farmers resisted the oppressive environment. Fifteen of the original tenants filed a case in court to secure recognition as tenants. In 1987, the Supreme Court decided and recognized the 13 petitioners as legitimate tenants, but denied recognition of two other tenant-leaders. In retaliation the houses of opposing tenants were burned to the ground. They were not allowed to their farms and those who continued to resist were killed. Some went to their farms at night and shot by

guards and declared as thieves. Old tenants recounted that 13 farmers were killed as they tried to fight the system. To secure their estate, the landowners installed barbed wires around the hacienda. Security was beefed up and around thirty (30) armed men were hired to maintain order inside the hacienda. This forced the tenants to relocate near the roads, by the highway. When they were allowed to build a chapel, they had the roofs overextended to accommodate twelve (12) tenant families. Others just built small huts with no electricity. When the community was wrecked by typhoons, the tenants were prevented from renovating huts since they were considered squatters and illegal occupants. As if not enough, the landowners issued notices of eviction against the sixty-seven (67) tenants. The tenants countered and filed petition for CARP coverage but they lost. This failed to dissuade them and by 1989, SMHDLR (Samahan ng Magsasaka sa Hacienda de Los Reyes) a new local peasant organization was formed. Mobilizations were planned ushering series of engagements with the DAR. The tenants vigorousness was evident in the packets of successes attained through concerted efforts. Their one (1) week picket in front of the DAR-CO for one resulted to the issuance of a notice of coverage in their favor signed by then Secretary Benjamin Leong. Consequently, the landowners filed criminal cases such as qualified theft, malicious mischief and libel cases against all the sixtyseven (67) families imprisoning some of its members. They persisted with mass actions until all cases were dismissed.

IMPACT June 2007

mejanmhi@www.myislandsphilippines.net

CARP in Cojuangco Lands:

Of Great Dreams and Blood Spilt!

The petitioners also encountered doldrums in their long-drawn land reform struggle. One factor that caused the long delay of the CARP coverage aside from the landowners themselves was the revolutionary movement. It called for free distribution of lands. For them, CARP is a sham. In effect, some petitioners doubted and chose not to be covered by the distribution program. Compounding the situation, the landlords protested the governments cheap valuation of the de Los Reyes estate which was pegged at P3M for the 130 hectares covered. DAR decided in 1998 to proceed with the CLOA distribution process. At this point, the local DAR official was changed. Barangay officials intervened by bloating the original number of petitioners from 67 to150 beneficiaries some of whom were not actual tillers. By 2001, parts of the retained areas were also covered. This time the organization was on top of everything and strictly supervised the process. The provincial

DAR also worked closely with the group. On February 14, 2007, CLOAs were handed swift and fair. Today, the farmer-beneficiary CLOA awardees declared their lives have changed for the better, for real. As a testimony, since 2001, there are 10 families who were able to buy vehicles transporting their produce to other areas to haggle for better prices. In contrast, those awardees who were not farmers but were included in the list by insistent barangay officials sold their awarded lots instead of developing them. Freed from the 70-30 sharing arrangement, the SMHDLR members claimed, they can now afford to buy food more than enough. Such opportunities became possible as they now have many alternative sources of income from varied farm produce aside from coconut, pineapple, vegetable and animal integration. Instead of makeshift huts, the farmers now live in houses built of concrete materials, with

electricity and appliances. Their children now go to school. While most Filipinos need to work as domestic helpers or entertainers abroad, the farmers here develop their lands, their families and their communities without losing dignity and breaking their families. Also, the land valuation is affordable: the homelot of one beneficiary was valued at P900.00 and the farmlot was P15,000.00. Today, the entire community has food, plants and products. The situation has greatly improved, with farm to market roads and people working with dignity. Those who petitioned not to be covered by CARP, now want their areas covered, in fulfillment of their long dream of owning the piece of land that has taken the lives of so many farmers. their grandparents who fought so that the hacienda can be redistributed to their grandchildren! I
(Evangeline Mendoza is a land reform beneficiary and leader of a national federation of landless rural poor, Ugnayan ng Nagsasariling Lokal na Organisasyon sa Kanayunan)

Volume 41 Number 6

http://qc.indymedia.org

ARTICLES

GMAs New Land Reform Paradigm Will End Equity and Justice-based CARP
By Danilo Carrranza ne critical issue confronting the government in the run-up to the second deadline of CARP in 2008 will have to do with how to complete land redistribution in communities undergoing agrarian reform transformation. To date, thousands of struggling rural poor communities all over the country have actively engaged the government to claim their rights under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) and to fulfill a dreamto own and till a piece of land. While CARP is already about to expire after nearly two decades of implementation, it is only belatedly that many rural poor communities are submitting their claims as potential beneficiaries. To a great extent, this belated claim to land rights exposes the inadequacy of the government to inform the rural poor of their rights. It also manifests the powerlessness of the rural poor in claiming their rights under existing laws due to grievous risks that include physical annihilation and economic dislocation evident in many rural communities today.1 There are communities that are located somewhere in the middle of the tedious and contentious process of land redistribution. These communities are continually trying to influence the land reform processes in their favor including actual coverage of the lands they till against, among others, landowners maneuvers to exempt their lands from land reform. There are also communities in the

almost there type, where potential beneficiaries are waiting for their respective titles to be formally awarded or to be properly installed in the land awarded to them. There are communities that are mobilizing to redefine their entitlement in favor of direct land control due to the failure of the specific CARP scheme implemented in their respected areas: the farm workers of Hacienda Luisita as well as farm workers in corporate farms in Negros Occidental who are affected by the stock distribution option (SDO). They also include a significant number of farm worker-beneficiaries in plantations in Mindanao under the leaseback option who are now campaigning to rescind onerous contracts between them and the former owner-leasing corporations. Finally, there are communities that are mobilizing against land reform reversals such as cancellation of EPs and CLOAs, land-use conversion of farmlands, and exemption of livestock areas and reclassified lands (industrial, commercial residential or eco-tourism) that have been covered under CARP. With no other alternative in sight, for many of these potential agrarian reform beneficiaries, the end of CARP in 2008 is the end of their dream of having a land to own and till. Ironically for the current government, as articulated time and again by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, the end of CARP is the beginning of a new land reform paradigm: the paradigm of non-confrontational land reform, where

equity and justice-based clamor for land by the rural poor is replaced by new farms for agribusiness and where awarded Certificate of Land Ownership Awards (CLOAs) can be used as collateral for loans 2. Accordingly, this new paradigm intends to create job opportunities for the rural poor through the development of 2 million hectares of new lands for agribusiness and generate 2 million out of 10 million jobs targeted in 2010. These new lands for agribusiness will include big private lands, government-owned lands and public lands, lands that have not been redistributed under the CARP. Yet, this new paradigm is not entirely new. It is as old as the big haciendas operating under corporate set-up controlled by a few landowning Philippine

IMPACT June 2007

GMAs New Land Reform Paradigm Will End Equity and Justice-based CARP
pants through redistributive reform to effect equitable access to and benefit from public lands. The recent RP-China agreement that will allow Chinese agribusiness investors to use thousands of hectares of public lands is one such example of agribusiness venture under the new land reform paradigm. Most unfortunately under this set up, utilization of lands are determined by the needs of people in China at the expense of rural poor Filipinos and over the need for food sovereignty. Nine crop species (cassava, corn, soybean, fruit trees, coconut, oil palm, rubber cassava, abaca and coffee) were listed as priority commodities for agribusiness. Four crops (cassava, corn, soybean and sorghum) are raw materials for feed supply to be raised through corporate tie-up with San Miguel Corporation (SMC). They shall occupy 24.4% of the 1.35 million hectares of the supposedly idle/under utilized lands targeted for agribusiness3 This new paradigm cannot be equated with equity and justice-based land reform: it veers away from land redistribution. It will not result in income redistribution in favor of the vast majority of the rural poor. The main task of completing land reform still depends, to a great extent on the implementation of CARP. To be more effective, reforms in the law have to be made to expand the coverage of land redistribution to include public lands, all tenanted landholdings and agriculturally productive lands. The most undesirable scenario among potential beneficiaries of agrarian reform is to be abandoned without any option to claim land rights due to the untimely termination of the CARP. But certainly the new paradigm being proposed by the government involving the establishments of agribusiness is not an agrarian reform option. It is business, pure and simple. I
1 From 2001 to the present, there were 38 farmers killed in the course of their agrarian reform struggles and 2,342 victims of continuing frustrated murder, evacuation, criminalization of agrarian struggles, imprisonment, arson. This also represents farmers whose lives are in great peril. (PARRDS, An NGO Report to the United Nations Pertaining to Violations along Agrarian Reform and Human Rights, June 2006) 2 In a speech in Bacolod last April 2007, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo articulated her new land reform paradigm in response to questions on whether the government would review its policies on the implementation of land reform to prevent further bloodshed and whether the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) should be implemented beyond 2008. 3 New Lands for Agribusiness: Deathblow to Agrarian Reform and Adequate Food, an Occasional Paper by PEACE Network, May 2005.

elite and profit-oriented foreign capital. The export-oriented pineapple and banana plantations in Mindanao are forms of agribusiness that create a lot of profit for the multinationals and big private corporations. Its workers, however, remain very poor that they continue to demand for redistributive land reform. Corporateowned sugar plantations in the Visayas as well as in Luzon are considered agribusiness ventures but they neither provide secure incomes nor security of tenure and basic rights like minimum wage among its thousands of workers. Their tillers continue to demand fair labor conditions as well as, expectedly, the implementation of agrarian reform. This kind of agribusiness set up enables a privilege few maintaining stranglehold of vast land

resources that should be redistributed through agrarian reform. A key feature of this new land reform paradigm includes the promise by government to open up public lands as new lands for reform, to include idle and under utilized public lands as well as alienable and disposable lands. This promise does not conform with realities at the ground. It is a fact that even public lands in the country are under the control of big and influential landlords: in Quezon, Iloilo, Negros, Masbate and many other provinces in the country, vast expanse of public lands that include inalienable forest lands are directly controlled by big landlords with thousands of occupants working as tenants or settlers and control of lands must be transferred to actual occu-

Denz Dayao / CBCPMedia

Volume 41 Number 6

ARTICLES

Renewed Confidence and Hope Among Peasants:

The Landmark Legal Victory of the Beneficiaries of Hacienda Maria

By Jane Lynn D. Capacio efore their victory at the Supreme Court, Samuel Estribillo, one of the farmer beneficiaries from the contested land in Barangay Angas, Sta. Josefa, Agusan del Sur, looked tired and apprehensive. He is weary from the drawn out case, untrusting of government officials, yet still possessing a glimmer of hope that things will, in the end, be alright. However, in June 2006, when the Supreme Court made a landmark ruling in favor of farmer beneficiaries, Sammys face lit up. His eyes looked relax and his smile was no longer slow in coming. When joked about his new aura, he would answer that a heavy toll

was lifted from his shoulders. Hacienda Maria Inc. (HMI) purchased 527.8 hectares of untenanted land from the government in December 1950. HMI brought in sacadas or farmworkers to improve and till the land. In 1972, when Presidential Decree (PD) 27 declared that all tenanted rice and corn land be covered by Operation Land Transfer (OLT) and awarded to peasants, a representative of HMI, Joaquin Colmenares, offered the entire property under OLT and began receiving payments for landowners compensation. Records showed that HMI, through

Colmenares, actively participated in the OLT proceedings. HMI was even a signatory to an undated Landowner and Tenant Production Agreement (LPTA) for the entire property that was submitted to the Land Bank of the Philippines in 1977. In the same year, HMI executed a Deed of Assignment of Rights, which was registered at the Registry of Deeds. Erroneous Coverage? Nothing was heard of from HMI until 1997 when it legally questioned the distribution of 277 hectares portion of the land to 25 tenants. HMI sought the cancella-

10

IMPACT June 2007

The Landmark Legal Victory of the Beneficiaries of Hacienda Maria

tion of the beneficiaries Emancipation Patents (EPs), land titles issued under PD 27, claiming that the area is erroneously annotated under agrarian reform. Twenty years after the OLT and despite continuous receipt of landowners compensation, the HMI insisted the area was not tenanted and was not devoted to rice and corn at the time of coverage. The Regional Agrarian Reform Adjudicator (RARAD) of CARAGA granted the petition of HMI to cancel the EPs and Transfer Certificates of Title (TCTs) of the beneficiaries. The Department of Agrarian Reform Adjudication Board (DARAB) affirmed the decision of the RARAD when the claimants appealed the case. The Court of Appeals issued a similar ruling on technical grounds. Estribillo vouched that the property was tenanted and was planted to rice and corn. He lamented that he and his fellow beneficiaries had been tilling the land for two decades and most have already fully paid for their awarded land when the petition to cancel their EPs was granted. When they were even told that their titles were fake, he felt helpless. The indefeasibility of EPs EPs, like CLOAs or Certificates of Land Ownership Award, are proofs of ownership. Like other titles that are enrolled in the Torrens System of Registration, the validity of EPs and CLOAs cannot be questioned or contested one year after the document was issued. Under this system, the period for cancellation of a title is one year. In a 19-paged decision written by Justice Minita V. Chico-Nazario, the Supreme Court ruled that the whole HMI property was placed under land reform in 1977 with the consent of the landowners who had been paid for their property. The unreasonable delay of the HMI in filing the petition for cancellation more than 20 years after the alleged wrongful annotation of the deed of assignment and more than 10 years after the issuance of the TCT to the farmers is apparently motivated by its desire to receive a substantially higher valuation and just compensation should the disputed 277 hectares be covered under Republic Act 6657 instead of PD 27, the ruling said. The domino effect of the case The case not only brought about legal victory in terms of the increased security of tenure of the beneficiaries, it also led to the enhancement of judicial policy through jurisprudence, strengthened peoples orVolume 41 Number 6 Volume 41 Number 6 ganization of the beneficiaries, and increased sense of confidence and hope of the people. Because of the legal battle that they faced, the beneficiaries decided to do something about their problem. They formed the Kahiusahan sa Malahutayong mga Mag-uuma para sa Ekonomikanhong Kalambuan or KAMMPE (Union of Sustainable Farmers for Economic Development) in 1997. KAMMPE became the rural peoples direct response to the problems and threats brought about by the claim of the HMI to their land. It became their voice in the many dialogues, rallies, and court hearings that they went to in the course of their battle. The case also led to the increase in knowledge and skills of the peasants. Through the assistance of NGOs like KAISAHAN, HEED, and BALAOD Mindanaw, KAMMPE members and leaders became active paralegals that are equipped with capacities in understanding the case and finding solutions. (KAISAHAN, HEED Foundation, and BALAOD-Mindanaw (Balay Alternative Legal Advocates for Development) are NGOs that assisted KAMMPE. KAISAHAN is based in Quezon City, HEED in Agusan del Sur, and BALAOD Mindanaw in Cagayan de Oro City.) Today, Sammy and the other members of KAMMPE, are reaping the benefits of their victory. While a decade of their lives was spent in struggle, they are now finally the full owners of their property. For some of KAMMPEs members, the victory happened when they are almost too old to enjoy their landownership. But nevertheless, the victory is for their children and grandchildren. For the first time in years, they have a renewed sense of hope that the future is better for their successors. I
(Jane Lynn D. Capacio is the Executive Director of KAISAHAN tungo sa Kuanlaran ng Kanayunan at Repormang Pansakahan, an NGO that served as legal counsel of the beneficiaries in their legal battle against HMI. KAISAHAN is a member of the Partnership of Agrarian Reform and Rural Development Services, PARRDS).

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Rural Empowerment through Agrarian Development: The Victorious Struggle of Peasants in Central Luzon
By the Project Development Institute/ PARRDS he Project Development Institute (PDI) initiated an alternative resettle ment program for Mount Pinatubo victims in 1991, using the concept of genuine agrarian reform. PDI entered into a Memorandum of Agreement with the Department of Agrarian Reform to implement a resettlement and reconstruction program for farmer-victims of Mount Pinatubos eruption. Both the Department of Agrarian Reform Region III and PDI referred to this program as MARC or model agrarian reform community. DAR Region III replicated the resettlement concept. The DAR National Office adopted the concept but revised the operational design and launched it as the Agrarian Reform Community (ARC) Program in the following year. PDI replicated the conceptual framework of the MARC in a part of Fort Magsaysay, located in Laur, Nueva Ecija. The farmers resettled there were the forgotten victims of the July 16, 1990, earthquake in the Caraballo Mountains. PDIs program was different from other resettlements. The problem after the eruption was not merely landlessness but the total loss of the land due to lahars. The program responded according to these situations. Under the program each family received a 240-square meter home lot and a 1.3-hectare farm lot. The program also provided other support services, from housing to food production assistance, necessary to sustain the people through the long and arduous process of resettlement in a new place.

DAR provided the agricultural lands to the farmer-victims while PDI instituted a capacity building and strengthening program for them accompanied by economic support structures. The program had already completed its resettlement phase. Sibol, the name given by the people to their new home, is now a new community. The problems and aspirations of the people are already beyond the Mount Pinatubo eruption. The Sibol Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries MPCI (SARBMPCI) is one of the few cooperatives in Zambales. The womens organization in the area,Samahan ng Kababaihang Magbubukid ng Sibol (SKMSI), has also initiated several projects on its own. PDI also expanded its program reach by initiating the Low External Input Sustainable Agriculture or LEISA programs in Barangays Bulawen, Salaza and Sto. Nio. PDI is also helping in the reorganization of the peoples organizations not only in the above mentioned barangays but also in other areas in Zambales. The unique situation in each area nonetheless suggests that new and creative approaches should be used. Instead of reviving the cooperatives in each of the barangays, PDI is organizing associations of LEISA/SA practitioners. The LEISA practitioners in each area are the direct beneficiaries of the PDI marketing program. For its effort in developing and putting into practice such a concept, PDI was given world recognition in the Basic Needs category at the World Expo 2000 held in

Hanover, Germany. By 2001, PDI developed The Community Enterprise Development Program in Zambales (CEDZ) as an alternative approach to enterprise development for the people of Zambales. The program makes use of the talents, skills and creativity of community organizers in convincing the people to raise their own social and financial capital before, during and after the agricultural lands have been transferred to the farmer-beneficiaries. Through savings, the people raise capital to be used as counterpart for the program. The very act of saving develops an important value something that was lost from the Filipino

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The Victorious Struggle of Peasants in Central Luzon

value system over the years. One of the objectives of the program is to re-educate the people with regard to the benefits of saving. The very act of saving is in fact a success indicator itself. The capital build up process will also be a learning process for the people. Through meetings and regular consultations among the members of the savings group or association, the people learn more about themselves and their fellow members, creating an atmosphere of mutual trust within their group. Capital, raised from the savings associations could also be used by the people for enterprises or other uses. The people will have many

options once a substantial amount, of both social and financial capital, has been raised. Enterprise development would only be initiated after the people raise their counterpart. No counterpart means no enterprise. This policy has been strictly enforced. One of the objectives of the program in Zambales is to support or invest in the social capital of self-help groups and other poor communities in the province. The program process restored the basic endowments to rural households whose primary means of generating livelihood, accumulating wealth, and transferring resources to the next generation is through land ownership. PDI has suc-

cessfully assisted the various POs in Zambales in acquiring land rights and in pushing the government to provide lands to till. PDI provided economic support to the target areas that are demand-driven and based on local priorities. Through the program, regional peasant and womens federations were established in Central Luzon that help them organize and assess their real condition. Gains have been achieved in empowering the peasants and women through their transformation from being victims to becoming owner-cultivators of their own land, actively participating in local governance. I Volume 41 Number 6

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ARTICLES

n Laborem Exercens of Pope John Paul II, we read: Agriculture is of fundamental importance. (101) Millions of people are forced to cultivate the land belonging to others and are exploited by the big landowners, without any hope of ever being to gain possession of even a small piece of land of their own. (102) A call to church people to help bring about radical changes in order to restore to agriculture and rural people in their just value as a basis for a healthy economy. (103) For us farmers, land is a gift and a realization of Gods promise of salvation to all people. Depriving the farmers of a piece of land to own and grabbing the indigenous peoples ancestral land in the name of development are concrete expressions of ones refusal and denial of the demand of the Gospel. We can never discount the value of our farmers nor can we belittle the significance of agriculture for our nation and its impact to the over-all economic development of our country. We toil, cultivate and plant, however, others are the ones benefiting and enjoying from our harvest and production. Land is still in the hands of the few landlords. There have been so many laws enacted and innumerable Land Reform Programs prepared in the different presidencies. One of which is Presidential Decree (PD) 27 which was launched in October of 1972 during the Marcos dictatorship and was revered to be the cornerstone of the Bagong Lipunan (New Society). In this program, farmers were given Certificates of Land Transfer (CLT) and Emancipation Patents (EP) which were subsequently withdrawn and in toto nullified. Under this program also, farmers were forced to plant High Yielding Varieties (HYV) coming from the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), a rice variety which was utterly dependent on imported and costly fertilizers and hazardous pesticides. To add insult to injury, this cornerstone agrarian reform program had a provision that mandated the surrender and the destruction of all traditional and native rice varieties known to poor farmers. These varieties did not require voluminous chemical inputs and have been proven for consumption. With CARP nothing substantial has changed Fast forward to 2007, Republic Act (RA) 6657the Comprehensive Agrarian

Has CARP Really Helped the Farmers?

By Danilo H. Ramos Reform Law (CARL) or the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP)has been in existence for 19 years. Nothing has changed with the horrible systematic feudalistic exploitation of farmers. It has done nothing to reverse the semi-feudal relational structure in the countryside and in agricultural regions. Nothing has changed in the exploitative relationship, in terms of production, between landowner and farmer. In the current Philippine setting, 7 out of 10 farmers do not own the land they cultivateand the remaining 3 who own their land cannot continue farming with security. The farmers are called partners by landowners, but in practice they are taxed to death and are treated as scumbags. Exorbitant interests on loans are rampant. Costs in production are sky-high while the prices of farm goods such as rice, corn, copra and the like remain rock-bottom. Chapter 2 of CARP provides for the retention of 5 hectares to the landowner and 3 hectares to the landowners children. If utilities are made available for free to tenants of the hacienda, commercial farms or plantations, then not less than 75% of the private land controlled/owned by the landowner or the agro-corporation may be exempt of agrarian reformwhich consequently overturns any proceedings towards the achievement of genuine land reform. In Section 17 of the same law, landowners are allowed to seek just compensation according to fair market value, therefore giving them a free hand to collect land fees or taxes from tenant farmers. This is clearly a provision that follows the dictates of landownersoppressive and exploitative. Again in that same law, the last to be affected are the large agricultural land holdings monopolized by landlordspowerful

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Has CARP Really Helped the Farmers?

or not. These are but a glaring few of the palpable proofs that the RA 6657 is contrafarmer, anti-agrarian reform and only exists to serve the interests of a wealthy, powerful fewnothing else than a rescript of foreign domination. Farmer beneficiaries of CARP were given Certificate Land of Ownership Awards (CLOA). This measly piece of paper is never a guarantee that the land tilled by farmers would be under their ownership, nor is it a form of security to reside in the land area farmers take care of. It is precisely government agencies that disregard, withdraw and cancel these certificates. These government agencies turn a blind eye when landowners exact exorbitant rent and fees from farmers or their tenants, and even when payments have already exceeded the just interests collected since 1972 when PD 27 came into effect. More than 2,000 CLOAs and EPs which constitute 380,000 hectares of land were cancelled in mid 2004, which include CLOAs and EPs granted in the past 2 decadesaffecting thousands of farmers and their families. (cf. IBON Facts and Figures May 2006.) According to the present regime, as of December 2005, the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) has secured the land tenure of 2.13 million farmers through the distribution of 3.7 million hectares of agricultural lands nationwide. These fabrications and trickery seemingly intends to purport the shammed success of the GMA administrations agrarian reform. This ploy is no different from the already debunked land reform magic of the Marcos dictatorship. Even the so-called 1,784 Agrarian Reform Communities (ARC) in the country which would only highlight land tenure improvement, do not turnover land ownership to farmers and would not even recognize the contribution of farmers and the agricultural sector in nation-building and national development. Using CARP to raise funds What is more painful and utterly shameful is that this present regime used farmers and farmers concerns in soliciting funds amounting to billions of pesosfrom the international community through various International Financing Institutions (IFI) where only a corrupt DAR official and pseudo-farmer organization (which connived with the government and the concerned agency) benefited. One other evidence showing that CARP works against the interest of agricultural workers is the forcible implementation of the Stock Distribution Scheme (or Option SDO) at the Hacienda Luisita in Tarlac, which covers 6,453 hectares where more than 6,000 families of farmers and agricultural workers live. Instead of granting land ownership to its constituents, Hacienda Luisita distributed stocks thereby retaining monopoly and ensuring oligarchic control of landowners over thousands of hectares of land on one hand, and, on the other, perpetuating the debilitating poverty and despicable conditions of existence for agricultural workers and their families. Another slapping burden for the peasantry is the agricultural liberalization under the World Trade Organization (WTO), which is the primary contributing factor for the proliferation and dumping of foreign agricultural produce in the Philippines like corn, coffee, vegetables, fruits, and even rice which is a staple in Filipinos diet. We heard from GMAs 2005 State of the Nation Address (SONA) that up to 2 million hectares of the Philippines agricultural land resources will be allotted to agri-business. In actuality, this will translate to the eviction of thousands of farmers from their lands, and their subsequent maltreatment. This will aggravate the already confounding food security problem our country is hounded with. At the moment, more than 57,000 hectares have been requisitioned (read: sequestered) for San Miguel Corporation (cassava), Dole (pineapples) and Nestle Corporation (coffee). Moreover, the program of militarization is now enforced in the countryside which systematizes the persecution of farmers who clamor for LAND TO THE FARMERS and for food. This militarization scheme is behind the revolting rampage against activists and peace advocates in the church sector. From January 2001 until March 2007, there have been documented 430 murders of farmers, fisherfolk, agricultural workers, women peasants and indigenous people under the Arroyo dictatorship. Peasants across the nation demand: Stop killing peasants who feed the nation. Demands of farmers and peasant advocates: 1. Implement genuine pro-poor/pro-farmers agrarian reform, provide for full, unequivocal land ownership to farmers and agricultural workers. Subsidize farmers requirements and provide higher state funding to the agricultural sector at the grassroots level. Not to the bogus and anti-farmer CARP. 2 Stop land-grabbing and stop fishingarea grabbing. Put a halt to Stock Distribution scheme (SDO), corporative farming scheme, joint venture arrangement. Stop the withdrawal and cancellation of Emancipation Patents, Certificates of Land Transfer and Certificate of Land Ownership Awards which have been issued to farmers. 3. Distribute and grant to farmers parcels of agricultural land which are under the government, which are public lands, which are parts of military reservations, and those agricultural lands controlled or repossessed by banking or financial institutions. Examples of which are Fort Magsaysay military reservation in Nueva Ecija, Central Mindanao University in Bukidnon, Hacienda Looc in Nasugbo, Batangas, and Tumandok Dumarao stock farms in Capiz. 4. Immediately cease land use conversion and crop conversion, especially those that have been appropriated for food production. Stop the introduction of commercialization, and proliferation of genetically modified organism (GMO) and genetically engineered food crops, seeds and genetic materials. Stop the field testing of BT corn and BB rice. 5. Immediately abandon the label and program of agricultural country of the WTO especially the terminology and its accompanying restrictions on the Philippines as part of the food crop sector. Stop forthwith the implementation of policies on agricultural liberalization, and the deregulation and privatization of the agricultural sector of our country. 6. Oppose and stop the militarization of the countryside and of rural/Agricultural areas. Respect the rights of farmers/peasants to freely organize themselves in the hope for a more humane, dignified and honorable living. Stop the killing of farmers and peasants. Indemnify and grant justice to the victims of political repression and state terrorism enforced by the GMA dictatorship. Farmers produce food that sustain the Filipino people, they should be accorded with the highest acknowledgement and respect. Every grain they create is a seed of life. Together let us advance the interest of farmers and agricultural sector. Farmers, fisherfolk, and the indigenous call on church people to continue fostering the journey towards the long hoped for land, justice and freedom. I
(Danilo H. Ramos is the Secretary-General of Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas, and Co-Chair, Church Peasant Solidarity Council)
Denz Dayao / CBCPMedia

Volume 41 Number 6

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Twenty Years of CARP: What Has Been Achieved and How?

By Belinda Formanes, Evangeline Mendoza, Danilo Carranza, and Dr. Saturnino Borras, Jr. and reform is a public policy that aims to restructure social relations between groups of people in an agrarian society in favor of the poor. Land is an important economic resource to the rural poor, but also to the landed elite. However, land is not just an economic factor of production. Land has a multidimensional character. Access to or control over land resources, or lack of it, influences the rural poors social inclusion or exclusion, political empowerment or disempowerment, as well as cultural and spiritual well-being. Access to or control over land resources in the context of the Philippine countryside largely defines the rural poors autonomy and capacity to define, assert and exercise their citizenship rights. Rural poverty is largely shaped by the degree of access to land, or absence of it, by the rural poor; and as such, poverty is also multidimensional. Today, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) estimates, that three-fourth of the Philippine poor are rural poor. (ADB. 2005. Poverty in the Philippines: Income, Assets and Access). This makes Land reform urgent and necessary. The Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) has been carried out for the past twenty years, or from June 1988 up to today. Legally though, the implementation dates back to 1972 when the Presidential Decree (P.D.) No. 27, or the limited Marcos land reform program in rice and corn lands was started; PD 27 was subsumed by the CARP law. The Herculean task of CARP was quite obvious: in 1988, the year the law started, the Gini-coefficient (a measure of the degree of inequality) in land ownership was calculated by James Putzel of the London School of Economics (LSE) to be 0.64a figure that suggested a very high degree of inequality. (James Putzel, 1992. A Captive Land: The Politics of Agrarian Reform in the Philippines). CARP A Compromised Land Reform Law CARP is neither a revolutionary nor a conservative land reform program. If by
Denz Dayao / IMPACT

revolutionary land reform we mean a national state law that calls for the unconditional expropriation of all private lands for free distribution to peasants, then CARP is not revolutionary because its expropriation process has been made conditional to a lot of factors. If by a conservative land reform we mean a land law that does not challenge in any significant way the monopoly of big landlords over large landholdings, then CARP is not conservative because it does challenge in some significant ways elite control over land resources. CARP is somewhere in between a conservative and revolutionary land reform framework, as defined here. In fact, CARP is a compromise land reform law. It has internalized within itself the balance of forces within the state and in society during the policy making process in 1986-1988. It has acquired elements of both revolutionary and conservative land reform frameworks, as described quite aptly in an early paper written by veteran activistscholar Francisco Lara Jr. about the land-

contradictory features of CARP. This dual character of CARP becomes a defining institutional parameter around which key actors in the land reform process will compete against each other and coalesce with others, because as Jennifer Franco of the Amsterdam-based Transnational Institute (TNI) emphasises, state land reform laws are neither selfinterpreting nor self-implementing. (Jennifer Franco [Forthcoming]. Making Land Rights Accessible: Social Movement Innovation and Political-Legal Strategies in the Philippines. ) It is the interactions among and between both state and societal groups and actors that eventually make the actual interpretation and implementation of the land reform lawat times in favor of the rural poor, but at times in favor of the landed elite. The maneuverings of the elite The landed elite block the efforts of poor peasants to their land claims made explicit and effective by a combination of strategies: sweet promises, tricks, coercion, force, and, increasingly, by assassination of peasant leaders. But in situations where poor peasants persist in their legitimate land claims, landlords evade land reform by extending their political and legal manipulation way beyond their localityto the provincial and regional centres, all the way to the national capital where they have influential allies in Congress, in the executive and even in the judicial branches of government Anti-land reform maneuvering by landlords at different levels and within the state and in society have prompted poor peasants to also seek and forge alliances with different groups in society and within the state. Poor peasants sought alliances with NGOs for legal assistance and political resources, with the Church for refuge especially in times of persecution, and other influential sectors of society, including reform-oriented officials within government. This interaction is not always smooth because different actors and groups that support poor peasants do not

"In light of these issues, it is clear that land reform remains urgent and necessary for millions of landless Filipino families nationwide."
marks and loopholes in the institutional framework of CARP. (Francisco Lara Jr., 1986, Land Reform in the Proposed Constitution: Landmarks and Loopholes, Agricultural Policy Studies No. 1). While CARP subjects all farmlands in the country to land reform, it includes provisions for the potential exclusion of some corporate lands; while CARP is basically expropriatory, it includes land acquisition modes that are voluntary; while CARP pegs the retention limit of landlords at a relatively low level (5 hectares), it includes provisions for landlords unlimited number of kin to add to the retention claim; while CARP asks peasant beneficiaries to amortize payment for the landlord based on affordability, it provides an open-ended legal framework for land valuation interpretation for landlords. These are just among the several important self-

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C O V E R S T O R Y

What Has Been Achieved and How?

Volume 41 Number 6

Twenty Years of CARP:

17

C O V E R S T O R Y always share common motivations and strategic agendas. Mutually reinforcing interactions between pro-land reform mobilizations from below and independent reformist initiatives by reform-oriented officials in government from above have been referred to as the bibingka strategy, notably by activist-scholar Saturnino Borras Jr. (Saturnino M. Borras Jr, 1999. The Bibingka Strategy in Land Reform Implementation: Autonomous Peasant Movements and State Reformists in the Philippines.) The bibingka strategy has serious limitations. It is dependent on the convergence of two autonomous initiatives: from below and from above. The existence of the two, is more the exception than the rule, at least as shown in the Philippine land reform experience where it occurred mainly during the period of 1993-1998 (and to some extent, up to 2000). When pro-reform mobilizations from below are thin, scattered and intermittent, initiatives from above tend to follow course. When autonomous reformist nearly disappeared within the land reform bureaucracy and the top leadership of the countrys governance, beginning in 2000, land reform from below resulted in limited outcomes and unrestrained violence against claim makers. Violence against land claimants The past few years have been marked by widespread violence against poor peasants claiming land rights, violence has come in forms ranging from criminalization of land claim making initiatives (i.e. charging peasants in courts with fabricated cases such as qualified theft or estafa); to everyday forms of intimidation and coercion; to all out violence in the form of assassination. It was in this deteriorating context that Eric Cabanit, secretary-general of UNORKA (Pambansang Ugnayan ng Nagsasariling Lokal na mga Samahang Mamamayan sa Kanayunan) and a retrenched farmworker with his own land claim in the vast banana plantation owned by the influential Floirendo family, was assassinated by masked men in April 2006 in Panabo, Davao del Norte. The escalating violence against peasant land claimants is combined with an increasing sophistication in legal maneuvers by landlords and allies in government. It is to be recalled that during the past few years, there have been several strategic legal cases that marked the defeat of social justice and the triumph of greed and elite monopoly, e.g. reaffirmation of the exemption of livestock, court decision that places the price of a hectare of land at an incredible level of PhP 1.4 million, as well as the continued implementation of anomalous and anti-reform mechanisms such as the stock distribution option (SDO), leaseback based either on problematic voluntary land transfer (VLT) or voluntary-offer-to-sell (VOS), as explained in recent works by veteran community organizer and CARP analyst Danilo Carranza. (Danilo Carranza and Pepito Mato, 2006. Subverting Peasants Land Rights: The Supreme Court Decision Exempting Livestock Area from the Coverage of Agrarian Reform. In Agrarian Notes, Quezon City: PEACE Foundation (www.peace.ne.ph; downloaded 06 May 2007); Danilo Carranza, 2005; Hacienda Luisita Massacre: A Tragedy Waiting to Happen. Agrarian Notes.) To extend CARP or not And so today we are confronted by the question of whether or not to extend CARP. We have explained above the context within which hard data about CARP implementation outcomes must be examined; it is necessarily a political context. Having examined that, we now take look at the figures, and for this, we refer to Tables 1, 2 and 3:
Table 1: Total Land Redistribution by Land Type, Under the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR)*, 1972-2005

A few critical observations are warranted, before discussing possible implications. First, land redistribution accomplishment has been relatively significant. Officially, to date nearly 6 million hectares of private and public lands were redistributed to more or less 3 million poor peasants, another 1.5 million hectares of land were subjected to leasehold reform, benefiting about a million tenant households. Altogether this data comprises about half of the total farmlands and two-fifths of the total rural households. Pessimists who saw only complete failure of CARP have been proven wrongbut only partly so. There are indeed serious failures, but successes in several areas can also be seen, most especially in agrarian reform communities (ARCs) established by the government, where land redistribution has been complemented by a more systematic delivery of support services. Increasing incomes of beneficiaries in these areas have contributed significantly towards poverty reduction. (DAR Quezon 2, August 2006. Report on Comparative Incomes of ARC and non-ARC Beneficiaries). Second, the land redistribution outcome is not, however, as high as the government claims or as rosy a picture as the government paints. The official data is highly contested. We believe there is evidence to indicate that actual land reform accomplishment is far from the official claims. There are several reported accomplishments that we believe do not constitute real reforms such as all the voluntary land transfer (VLT), overpriced voluntary offer-to-sell (VOS), fake or elite beneficiaries for the Community-Based Forest Management (CBFM) and Alienable and Disposable (A&D) programs, bloated leasehold accomplishment report, outright record tampering, and lands awarded where beneficiaries do not occupy lands. For these reasons, we do not believe governments claim that land redistribution program is 85% complete. We

Table 1.1: Total Land Redistribution by Land Type Under the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR)**

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Twenty Years of CARP: What Has Been Achieved and How?

Table2: Yearly Summary of Leasehold Accomplishment, Area in Hectares, by Region and by Year (as of 1986 to 2003)

Table 3: Number of Beneficiaries of Land Reform Program, 1972-2000

Notes:
CARP = Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program LAD = Land Acquisition and Distribution; OLT = Operation Land Transfer; CA = compulsory acquisition; VOS = voluntary offer-to-sell; VLT = voluntary land transfer; GFI = government financial institution; KKK = Kilusang Kabuhayan at Kaunlaran; LE = Landed Estate; A&D = Alienable and Disposable Land CBFM = Community-Based Forest Management. * DAR data = 1972 to 31 March 2005 ** DENR data = beginning 1987 to 31 December 2004 Sources: DAR-MIS (2005) Land Acquisition and Distribution Status (Table 4) as of December 31, 2005. Quezon City: Management of Information System (MIS), DAR. Photocopy version. DENR (2004) Summary of DENRs Land Distribution Accomplishments by Land Type, By Region. Quezon City: DENR, CARP Secretariat, computer print-out.

believe it is most likely to be half of what the government claims (or even slightly below that) or just around 40% if we factor in the few millions of hectares of private and public lands that mysteriously disappeared from official scope of CARP. Third, two policy areas are usually missed in most discussions within civil society, namely, public and governmentowned lands as well as the implementation of leasehold system. Most civil society groups tend to downplay the importance of public lands as well as leasehold reform. Yet, upland and public land occupants who depend on these lands have been increasing and are expected to reach 25 million by 2015. Likewise, tenants in most of the remaining CARP target of 700,000 hectares of coconut lands have been suffering decades of unequal sharing (normally 60% - 40% sharing in favor of landowners, where tenants shoulder the cost of production) when the law mandates for leasehold system where they are entitled to a minimum of 75% of net production of the land. As a result, many groups do not have systematic work in these policy areas permitting the effective maneuvers by

anti-reform forces in subverting the CARP law. In light of these issues, it is clear that land reform remains urgent and necessary for millions of landless Filipino families nationwide. The task is far from complete. This is true especially when we recognize that even the partial reform secured over the years might have already been cancelled out by the anti-rural poor macropolicies of government, such as privatization, import liberalization and deregulation. New mega projects within these policies, such as the recent RP-China agreement, may well altogether reverse all previous modest land reform gains and completely block in future efforts for redistributive reform. At this juncture, civil society engagement at all levels of governance is truly of the most profound and critical importance. The debate on the extension will be empty if there is no significant spread and intensity of land reform struggles from below. The current extent and level of struggles are admirable but far from sufficient to influence a progressive framework and course of policy contestation for or against land reform extension. The peasants have no other course of action but to fight for their rights. But they need allies in the broader society, especially among institutions that strongly promote social justice, such as the Catholic Church. I
(Belinda Formanes is the Executive Director of Partnership for Agrarian Reform and Rural Development Services (PARRDS); Danilo Carranza and Dr. Saturnino Borras come from Philippines Ecumenical Action for Community Empowerment Foundation Network (PEACE); Evangeline Mendoza from Pambansang Ugnayan ng Nagsasariling Lokal ng mga Samahang Mamamayan sa Kanayunan, UNORKA).

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ARTICLE S

Land Reform Struggles of Bondoc Peninsula Tenants

By Danilo Carranza he Bondoc Peninsula in the province of Quezon is notorious for two types of violence: The first type is structural violence, a consequence of a highly skewed landownership in favor of a very few landowners. The second type is armed violence resulting from a persistent insurgency that has fed on the poverty of the majority of the population. Both types of violence are undeniably linked to how land resource is controlled and allocated in the area. A study by the Asian Institute of Management in 1989 revealed that only 1.1% of the population controlled 44% of the most productive lands in the area. In the years prior to the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), tenants in coconut lands never earned enough and had to survive from a sharing system of 70% - 30% or 60% - 40% in favor of land owners, with production cost shouldered by the tenants. In 2000, the Philippine Coconut Authority estimated that coconut farmers in the area earn more or less P10,000/hectare annually. The alienation of tenant-tillers from the fruits of their labor has been a constant source of social tension between tenants and landlords and makes the tenants vulnerable to the agitation and recruitment of

the armed movement. The latters insistence on the orthodox framework of overthrowing the state via protracted peoples war based in the countryside has for the most part failed to mesh with peasant social realities and rights claim-making initiatives at the grassroots. Ironically, the CPP-NPA maintains an entrenched relationship of mutual reciprocity with the regions biggest landlords, and has even become part of the established system of oppression1 This setting produced in the late 1990s a new peasant movement oriented towards rural reform. This organization is united by its unprecedented drive to induce statesponsored expropriation and redistribution of heretofore untouchable hacienda lands. This movement of some 3,800 tenant families under the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Bondoc Peninsula (KMBP) has made significant land reform breakthroughs in recent years. Its initial successes in reforming lands through the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) (making the results legally binding) have resulted largely from innovative collective action initiatives that defy landlord power while sustaining creative engagement with the government that resulted in titles granted through the state law.

The first significant agrarian reform breakthrough was recorded in Brgy. Catulin, Buenavista in 1999, when a 174hectare parcel of the landholdings of the biggest landowning family in the area, the Reyes family, was distributed to 55 previously landless tenants. In late 1998, prior to the redistribution of the land, the tenant-petitioners were forcibly evicted and their houses bulldozed by the men of Reyes. Eddie Lopez, 47 years old, current KMBP Chair and one of the beneficiaries in Brgy. Catulin remembers how they had to defy all forms of threats and harassment to make their rights to the land real: Prior to our eviction, we were told by the farm manager that if we push through with our campaign for land redistribution, we will be tied to poles and paraded to the town plaza like pigs. But we could not be stopped, for outside of these threats, a greater danger awaits us, the spectre of hunger. In September 1999, after getting a favorable decision from the DAR, they were reinstalled to the land by a combined force of the Philippine National Police and the Armed Forces of the Philippines. They eventually received their Certificate of Land Ownership Award in September 1999. The campaign for reinstallation was supported

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Land Reform Struggles of Bondoc Peninsula Tenants

by non-government organizations and the Roman Catholic Church in the area led by Bishop Emilio Marquez, who was then the Bishop of the Diocese of Gumaca. A new community based on family-owned farms had since evolved from this struggle where former tenants and their families are in full control of the lands they till. With land reform came increases in incomes as freedom from the onerous sharing system automatically increased their incomes three-fold. Because of this, the farmers have been able to build semi-concrete houses, and are now free to raise farm animals. With the help of the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR), a new farm-tomarket-road was constructed to facilitate the marketing of farmers produce. An area for putting up a school has been designated from within the distributed area. Rebecca Ruga and former tenants in a 540-hectare landholding located at Barangay Pagsangahan, municipality of San Franciso, had to endure various forms of physical threats and a number of criminal cases that led to their imprisonment in 2001, before they won their struggle for land reform. The entire family now owns more than seven hectares since three family members qualified to become beneficiaries. They have been cultivating the land as owner-beneficaries since early 2003. The transfer of land significantly increased the familys income and has enabled the family to send the younger children to school. With the financial support of a daughter, Rebecca has also renovated her house and put up a sari-sari store. The land reform breakthroughs in Bondoc Peninsula have been sustained and organizing of tenants has spread out to the biggest haciendas. As of December 2006, around 2,500 KMBP members own more than 7,000 hectares of land awarded through the CARP. Moreover, some 800 members of the KMBP also have direct control of around 4,000 hectares of contentious public lands in the municipalities of San Andres, San Narciso and Mulanay. At present, the KMBP continues to push for the redistribution of around 23,000 hectares of private and public lands in the area. This is more than twice the official balance of the land distribution target of the DAR. The DAR on the other hand, has reported more than 80% accomplishment of its land distribution target in the area and has acknowledged the positive role of organized tenants in facilitating land reform. Members of KMBP include tenants in the three biggest haciendas in the area that include Hacienda Villa Reyes (12,000 hectares), Hacienda Uy (3,800 hectares) and Hacienda Matias (2,800 hectares). The agrarian reform process in these haciendas, have been most difficult. The cost of success in making their land rights a reality has been quite high. Anti-reform actors that include armed goons, landlords and the armed left continue to employ various forms of harassment, intimidation and physical violence targeting peasant leaders and petitioning communities. As a result, four peasant leaders have been murdered since 1998: three by goons of landlords and one by the armed left. Likewise, more than 40 persons have been injured by the continuing physical attacks on tenants. In January, 2004, one of the key leaders of KMBP in the municipality of San Narciso barely escaped an attempted assassination by the armed left. The latest anti-reform violence took place in March 2007, when a member of a local organization in San Francisco, Quezon sustained multiple hack wounds on the head and the body and his left hand was completely sliced off as a result of the attack by a goon identified with a land owner. The pattern of anti-reform action against organized peasants in Bondoc Peninsula may have shifted to more convenient and officially state sanctioned means of harassment. This is done through the filing of various criminal cases against tenants. As of December 2006, members of the KMBP are facing more than 300 criminal cases that include qualified theft, estafa, trespassing, murder, attempted murder, libel, trespassing, grave coercion, malicious mischief etc. The number is still increasing as cases filed against tenants continue to be discovered in court, sometimes by accident or through information from concerned court employees. With the aim of paralyzing external support, the former community organizer of QUARDDS 2, was included in 225 of the cases of qualified theft filed by the farm manager of the biggest landlord in San Narciso-San Andres area. The criminalization of agrarian reform cases has had serious consequences on the lives of members of the KMBP. First, they unnecessarily lose their freedom. Since 1996, more than 300 tenants have been imprisoned due to trumped up charges filed by landlords. Last year, 25 farmers were in jail for almost three months in the district jail of Gumaca, while 21 more farmers stayed in jail for five days due to a bench warrant issued by the municipal trial court in San Francisco. In addition, 68 more farmers were in prisoner state for more than two months after they voluntarily took refuge at the DAR office in Quezon City to avoid arrest and the harsh conditions in jail. Second, criminalization brings profound economic hardships, and contribute to making the tenants even poorer. The cost of bail is too high and could not be raised by farmers. For each qualified theft case for example, a farmer will have to raise P30,000 as bail bond. Yet some farmers will have to raise more than P300,000 because they are facing more than 10 counts of qualified theft. Last year alone, under pressure from the publicity generated by the jailed farmers who voluntarily surrendered to call the attention and expose the government of its inadequacies to deliver agrarian justice, the DAR had to raise more than P4 million to bail the farmers out. Certainly, this amount is out of farmers reach. The cost of attending hearings is also quite prohibitive. The accused farmers and their relatives had to travel 5-6 hours from their place to reach the courts in Gumaca

www.bondoc-solidarity.de

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ARTICLE S
and had to spend more than P350 for each hearing to cover food and transportation expenses, not to mention legal fees and incidental expenses like photocopying, etc. These scarce resources should have been spent for food and clothing or for more urgent needs in the household. Moreover, the unnecessary imprisonment disrupts the economic activities of entire families. They lost productive days or months due to imprisonment while family members had to visit them in jail regularly to provide moral support, in the process losing potential productive hours they could have spent tilling the land. Lastly, criminalization is terrorizing communities and is adding to the cynicism pervasive among rural poor people The questionable manner of effecting some of the arrests (in the middle of the night and with display of brute force as if arresting notorious criminals) result in collective anxiety of affected communities and erosion of confidence in the existing legal system. Notwithstanding these difficulties, the tenants are persevering in their struggle for land rights and basic human rights. With the help of external support like NGOs based in Manila, the Diocese of Gumaca under Bishop Buenaventura Famadico, concerned individuals and pubic officials in Bondoc Peninsula, the KMBP is sustaining its engagement with the government and has opened up issues for advocacy on state and non-state actors accountability on human rights and international humanitarian law as well as the need to decriminalize agrarian reform cases. The remaining challenge in Bondoc Peninsula is to complete the distribution process. But with barely a year left, it is highly improbable for the DAR to complete the official CARP target, more so the actual distribution of private and public landholdings engaged by the KMBP. But in the light of a new sense of organized power, however, and with the sustained external support, tenants in the area should be expected to sustain its demand for the fulfillment of their land rights anchored on peaceful but persistent struggle for land reform. I
1

Salvaging our Politics

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

Jennifer C. Franco (2003). On Just Grounds: The New Struggle for Land and Democracy in the Bondoc Peninsula , Institute for Popular Democracy. The Quezon Association for Rural Development and Democratization Services (QUARDDS) is the local non-government organization directly assisting landless peasants land reform struggle in the Bondoc Peninsula since 1996, through community organizing, legal and paralegal support and advocacy and social mobilizations.

fter going through hell in the last elections, the seemingly only positive lesson to learn and action to take is to hurry and salvage our politics. Lets issue a distress call, an SOS, a mayday. Lets call 911 and sound the alarm! The new gadgets, the increased awareness and vigilance of many people, etc., have just made it more painful for us to witness how ugly our electoral process is. Is the picture truly reflective of us as a people? Are we that depraved? I dont know if there are other countries like us in repulsiveness. But if there are, we should quickly get out of that league. Its sickening. Its completely depressing. Why are we still in the primitive age? We need to modernize, and computerization can help a lot. It can reduce cheating into acceptable and irrelevant levels. It seems our skills in cheating during elections have been polished and perfected through the years by our crooks. And the funny and sad thing is that no one admits to any wrongdoing. Everyone is as innocent as an angel! But a lot more is needed: nothing less than individual and collective conversions, a circumcision of the heart. If we dont start there, no amount of sophistication in our computerization can solve our most shameful problem. I suppose by now, everyone, including our little children, knows how cheating can be done in utter disregard for any trace of decency. What a curse we have here! We are already poisoning the minds of our future generations.

Soon after the elections, there were talk shows assessing the political maturity of the Filipino people. Its like rubbing it in. How can there be political maturity when a good sector of our populace are still poor, ignorant, and very vulnerable to be taken advantage of by our almost completely conscienceless politicians? Apathy and cynicism are obvious. How can there be political maturity when many of our politicians do not even know the true essence and purpose of politics? For them, its just about egotripping, whether personal or family. Or politics for them can just be the field to give full play to their avarice, greed, lust for power, their talent and skills in deception. They must feel that they are exempted from moral and legal requirements during elections. They have the nerve to present themselves as the only hero in town, the indispensable savior and all that nauseating stuff. It seems that common sense has fled, the last shred of good manners and human decency blown away. The level of rational, objective discussion of issues bottomed out. Only a few managed to say something sensible. For many others, the picture was horrifying. All sorts of fallacies in the book were flaunted. Passions flared up, while reason was paralyzed. How can there be political maturity when many of the elections officials in all levels, from the poorest clerks and watchers up, are just dripping with dishonesty? They cannot even mask it. Their
Salvaging p26

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EDITORIAL

Carping Up and Away

he program is basically acceptable in content and praiseworthy in spirit. It can even be said that program is in accord with the noble principle that those who have less in life, should have more in law. It has to be acknowledged that the program has already benefited a good number of poor and humble land tillers. But the truth begs to be said, may more small and lowly farmers are still anxiously waiting for their piece of land they can call their own translated into reality, the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) is neither that affirmative of land reform, nor it is comprehensive. The culprit for this contradictionas usual is the executive department with its highly paid and much advertised agencies precisely tasked to implement the CARP. It is enough to recall the infamous Mendiola massacre, more recently; there was the hacienda Luisita massacre. And since the advent of the present administration, farmers and their sympathizers were being eliminated one by one with neither fear of the law nor any remorse of conscience. And as long as this administration remains in power, it can be safely predicted that the killings also remain in fashion. In the event that the farmers concerned and their

supporters are not actually disposed of for good, they are abused. Threatened or abducted, this is why to this date, there are angry public rallies staged by farmers, not to mention their hunger strikes every now and then. It is already the age of information technology, climate change and scientific marvels but many farmers are still waiting for the right and full implementation of CARP. And there is the issue of the fund already earmarked for the CARP implementation. Its source is identified and its amount is determined. And as expected, the present administration has other concerns at heart, other interests in mind as far as it is concerned. The CARP funding is a subject matter to be either avoided or considered a non-issue. Thus, the farmers rightful questions repeatedly come to fore: Where is the money? What was it spent for? How much is left if any? Will CARP be still fully implemented at all? Meantime, the farmers concerned have to wait as they have been always waiting for decades. The national leadership is busy rebuilding its political survival, busy mouthing economic progress and flying from one country to another. Poor farmersnot only in resources but also in dignity!

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ARTICLE S
Facing from p5

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Dennis M. Sabangan/epa/Corbis

Where can we turn? The Philippine Agenda 21 (PA21), the national blueprint for sustainable development (SD), offers us a guide in the overwhelming work ahead of us. What is PA21? As early as 1987 world government leaders were warned that the present global development pattern with its damaging technologies is destroying the life-support systems of our planet and so the need to shift to sustainable development. Respecting the Earth, this development can enable the present generation to meet their needs while it safeguards that future generation can also meet their needs. At the Earth Summit in 1992 the UN Framework on Climate Change and the Commission on Sustainable Development, among others, were established. The main document of the Conference is the Agenda 21 for SD Agenda for the 21st century. In response to its commitments to the Earth Summit, to have its national Agenda 21, the country, through the Philippine Council for Sustainable Development (PCSD), crafted the Philippine Agenda 21 (PA 21) in 1996. The PA21 rests on initiatives and learning from many sources which were distilled from long years of serious work towards SD. This is the fruit of a two-year series of dialogues and consultations among government agencies and members of civil society with heavy, active NGO/PO representation. The PA21 is a working document. Much of the work that need to be undertaken by a community for SD have been identified and listed as action agenda across ecosystems and for each ecosystemforests, and lowlands/agriculture, urban, coastal and marine, and freshwater ecosystems. Action agenda for critical resourcesminerals/mines and biodiversity, are also provided. Regional action agenda from different regions are proposed. A section on implementation of the PA21 delineating sectoral roles and responsibilities ends the document. The journey towards SD involves both a transition and a paradigm shift. The PA21, therefore, adopts a two-pronged strategy in defining and mapping out the action agenda: 1) creating the enabling conditions which would assist various stakeholders to manage the transition and at the same time build their capacities towards SD; and 2) direct proactive efforts at conserving, managing, protecting and rehabilitating ecosystems through an approach that harmonizes economic, ecological and social goals. (PA21 Executive Summary, p. XXV). Operationally, SD is development that draws out the full human potential across

ages and generations. It is at the same time, ecologically friendly, economically sound, politically empowering, socially just, spiritually liberating, gender sensitive, based on holistic science, technologically appropriate, builds upon Filipino values, history culture and excellence, and rests upon strong institutional foundations. (Executive Summary, PA 21 p. xxiv.xxv, PCSD, Manila, 1997). In order to cope with the daunting prospects of climate change Filipinos need to discover the vision of a sustainable Philippines in the PA21, and creatively, diligently and painstakingly meet its challenge. The document is a handy guide for a group of citizens, a barangay or a municipality who envision a sustainable community. There are bright spots in the hard, pioneering work in this area which spans many years, even before PA21. Through much NGO advocacy, some LGUs have recognized the value of PA21. Bohols version Of PA21 is called the Bohol Environmental Code. Other places followed with their provincial environmental code including Mindoro. NGOs like the Philippine Partnership for the Development of Human Resources in Rural Areas (PHILDHRRA) has made sustainable integrated area development (SIAD) a thrust in its several areas of work. In Zamboanga del Norte the Center for Social Concerns and Development (CESCOD) conducts training and seminars for members of a barangay development team enabling the members to participate in the formulation of their barangay development plan. This also ensures active participation of the community in the planning process and decision-making. In 2005 it was heartwarming to see how the residents in Barangay Tongan-tongan, Valencia, Bukidnon have used the principles of PA21 in making and implementing their barangay development plan with a strong focus on sustainable agriculture. Together with other places, they want to make Valencia the organic capital of the Philippines. The self-confidence of the villagers was a sign of growing empowerment among them. In Imugan, Sta Fe, Nueva Vizcaya, the missionary labor of Pastor Delbert Rice for about thirty years has nurtured a sustainable forest community among the Kalahans. One can see that he

has woven creatively together indigenous wisdom, knowledge and practices and the insights and principles of the PA21. At the community, barangay or parish/ municipal level, those active in the church are in a good position to help bring together the three main actors of SDthe government, business and civil society. The Churchs option for the poor makes it more urgent for her to address the worsening ecological crisis which is inextricably linked to socio-economic, political and spiritual concerns. Church Teaching The situation also calls for a greater articulation of the Churchs pronouncements on development coming from such documents as PCP II, Populorum Progressio, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, Centesimus Annus, PJP II Message on World Peace Day, 1990, etc. The teaching of the Church regarding respect for life and the integrity of creation and on total human development can provide a wider and firmer base for the principles of the PA21 and influence its implementation, as this teaching inspire dedicated individuals and groups in their work for the sustainability of our islands. Pope John Paul II reminds us, Christians, in particular, that (our) responsibility within creation and (our) duty towards nature and the Creator are an essential part of (our) faith. This invites all in the community families, the school, the churches, government and business, to unite and do as much as can be done together in a very organized manner with the hope and certainty of Gods help, knowing fully well the kind of hardship and suffering that can be expected from the ravages of climate change, and to hold the hand of our merciful and loving God. I
Sr. Ma. Aida Velasquez, OSB is the Coordinator of Lingkod Tao-Kalikasan

FROM THE B L O G S

Kapatiran

I
The Pampanga Phenomenon
ts a divine crusade! Its people power! Its a miracle! These are some of the impressive and impressing exclamations made by some people on the occasion of the euphoria caused by the election of a priest to the office of Pampanga governor. And the extraordinary claims have their basis in the socio-political realities that surfaced in the province before, during and after the last elections. The political majority of the Pampangueos amply showed they had enough of the perceived corruption of the two other candidates aspiring for the same office before the priest filed his own candidacy. It was then commonly said that the political contest between the two previous aspirants for the office of the governor, was in substance balas vs bolitas. The former stands for the continuous corruption in the quarrying business in the province. The latter on the other hand represents the flagrant corruption brought about by the jueteng syndicate, whose Vatican equivalent is said to be in Lubao, Pampanga. Furthermore, a good number of the people demonstrated that gold and goons were no match for their collective good will and resolve. The Filipino bayanihan spirit unquestionably proved stronger than all the die-hard allies, practically limitless resources and dubious expertise of traditional politicians. All the massive propaganda and big promises of the other two candidates bowed down before truth, sincerity and commitment on the part of the

third lowly candidate. Finally, it has become evident that even Pampanga is no longer a GMA kingdom. No less than the both other losing candidates were close and precious Malacaang allies. Both were rejected by the people. Both fell by the wayside. Both must be bewildered how could they have lost the elections when they have behind them all the machinery and wealth, power and influence of no less than the incumbent national leadership. But after all the above good news, when the euphoria is gone and the exhilaration stopped, there are at least three, realistic and objective bad news to consider. The Catholics in Pampangaand they are unusually good and fervent onesare now not lightly divided, considering that the big composite majority of the followers of the three candidates profess and practice the same Catholic faith. The clergy of Pampanga is said to be also divided in the sense that while some favor and endorsed the candidacy of a fellow-priest, there are those however who are perceived as decidedly against it as something offensive to good sense. There was even the public occasion when the praying of the Holy Rosary and the singing of Church songs here heckled and ridiculed by the followers of the other two candidates. How and when will these deep wounds be curedif at all?
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is a rather well known fact that the three Kapatiran senatorial political candidates are adorned with impeccable integrity, competence and commitment. They clearly and passionately professed their mission to exercise the public office they pursued in the last elections in line with the mandates of justice and truth, honesty and transparency. Their resources were admittedly very limited. Political machinery they had none. But just the same, they were credible and trustworthy. That was why a good number of people voted for them. The votes however were far from enough. They lost the elections. They accepted their electoral defeat with grace and kept their heads high. They remain upright men. They continue being committed followers of Catholic faith and morals. They faithfully subscribe to the social doctrine of the Church repeatedly and consistently teaching that political life is the arena proper of the laity in the Church. Truth to say, they can be readily considered as good citizens and exemplary Christians. All the above lay attributions however did not help them win the elections. The question wherefore comes to fore: Was it because they were not priests who could have used their priesthood to gather enough votes? Had they been priests, would they have used such a reality as a convenient political instrumentality to win the elections? Meantime, there was a priest who was elected to a gubernatorial office in a certain province. He too had meager resources without however any political party, much less the machinery that goes with it. But just the same, he won the elections with much praise and joy from his fervent followers. The question is, were he not a priest, would the people have in fact voted him as their provincial governor? Could he have in effect actually used his priesthood to get elected? Were he not a priest and just a plain layman like all Kapatiran candidates, could be have really won the elections just the same? One thing is certain, it is bad taste to say the least, that a priest uses precisely his priesthood to win an elective public office in a province precisely known for their fervent Catholic faith. The Church all over the globe has consistently held and fervently taught that the sacred priest is inherently meant for the preaching of the Word of God and for the administration of the sacraments of the Churchnever for political ambition.
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N E W S FEATURES

Journalists in Macau Come out Against Growing Censorship

MACAU, China, May 29, 2007The Macau media market might be growing but censorship seems to be doing the same according to critics who are urging the government to stop meddling with press freedom. The warning comes from the Macau Media Workers Association whose anger was fuelled by the governments handling of Chief Executive Edmund Ho Hau-wahs remarks on the Labour Day rally. Only a government-owned television station was allowed to film Mr. Hos meeting with local journalists on May 4, and government information officials supervised the editing of the footage before it was released to other media. In a strongly-worded statement issued on May 11, the association condemned the Information Bureaus interference in press freedom and editorial independence. The bureau responded saying that it absolutely respected press freedom, noting that on May 4, our staff went to Teledifuso de Macau only to obtain footage for use on the Information Bureaus website. For Macau Legislator Jos Coutinho, the editorial integrity of many local media has been tainted by government subsidies. A media subsidy plan was launched in the December 1999 shortly after the former Portuguese colony was handed over

Protestant Pastor Tortured by Police

LAGUNA, Philippines, May 29, 2007 A Protestant clergyman reported abducted on Sunday as he made his way home to Bian, Laguna, south of Manila, was found yesterday in Camp Pantaleon Garcia, near Laguna. In a statement, Cavite Police Superintendent Fidel Posadas said that contrary to early reports that Berlin Guerrero had been abducted by military men, he was in fact arrested by a team of police officers from the Intelligence Division of Camp Pantaleon Garcia. An arrest warrant had been issued against him by the Regional Trial Court (RTC) in Bian for inciting to sedition and murder in 1991 and 1993. According to the statement, Guerrero, his wife and their three children had just attended a to mainland China, but however controversial it was at the time, it caused few ripples. In fact, Mr. Coutinho said that despite government subsidies the Portuguese-language press in Macau has remained largely independent perhaps because of the long tradition of press freedom in Europe. Macaus 500,000 residents are served by eight Chinese-language and three Portuguese-language daily newspapers, five Chinese-language and one Portuguese-language weekly, an English-language daily and dozens of magazines. A host of Hong Kong publications can also be bought in the city. (AsiaNews/Agencies) worship service and were on their way home when they were stopped at 5.30 pm local time by two white vans. Witnesses report that two of the three occupants of one van took Guerrero. The suspects shoved him inside the van after hitting him at the back of his head with a gun and sped towards an unknown direction leaving his wife and children behind. Guerreros kidnapping follows his colleague Pastor Caloy Dela Cruzs abduction last March 29 in front of the Union Theological SeminaryPhilippine Christian University in Barangay Pala-pala. Dela Cruz, however, was released the next day after his abductors realized that he was not Guerrero, a former secretary general of Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan)-Southern Tagalog. Chief Superintendent Nicasio Radovan has ordered
Salvaging p22

a thorough investigation into the incident. The United Church of Christ of the Philippines (UCCP), to which Reverend Guerrero belongs, condemned the abduction stating that it is probably related to a crackdown against militants and activists defending workers and the poor in the area. Journalists and human rights activists have suffered from similar actions with thousands killed, wounded or made to disappear. A paper about knowing ones enemy issued by the Filipino military had classified the Church as a leftwing organization. Since the current president, Ms Gloria MacapagalArroyo, came to power more than 30 UCCP pastors and several lay workers have been killed. (Santosh Digal / AsiaNews)

rationalizations and even the very tone of their voice give them away. And the media, how did it behave? There were many shining moments. Sad to say, there were also many lapses. Partisanship ruled in many instances, not objective and balanced views. It monitored the events well. But it still needs a lot to learn about how to educate people on politics. There were also many shallow, knee-jerk reactions that were sensationalized and made to scream in the media. The whole experience approximates the case of a demonic possession urgently needing exorcism! I pity the many good-

hearted citizens who tried to help but were swept away by the savage force of our sick electoral system. Ok, lets stop lamenting. Lets just hope that this nightmare be an occasion for everyone to do something drastic to make a change for the better. God always has to come to the picture. There should be more stable and ongoing initiatives in this regard, not on-the-spot improvisations. Advocacy groups for this purpose should abound. Church leaders have to do their part in actively evangelizing our people to infuse true Christian spirit in our political exercises. I

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N E W S FEATURES

Iraqi Government Offers its Full Support to the Persecuted Christians of Baghdad
BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 24, 2007The Iraqi government has expressed its solidarity to the Christians of Baghdad and has pledged to protect them. In a statement in English reported yesterday by the AINA news agency, a spokesman for the Iraqi government said that the Iraqi Cabinet addressed the issue of threats and expulsions of Christian families in Baghdad by terrorist groups. The Cabinet expressed its full support to provide all necessary assistance needed to protect them, and provide any assistance to face this threat that is rejected by our orthodox Islamic religion and the forgiving Iraqi society, between all of its componentsespecially the relationship with our Christians brothers. Iraqi Christians, both at home and abroad, have welcomed the governments statement, which they have been waiting for a long time following many complaints by bishops and the clergy. They note however that the statement is only about intentions and that it does not contain any concrete steps to limit the campaign of persecution directed at the Christian community in the capital and Mosul. These two cities are at present the most affected by violence, threats and abuses, including seizure of property and forced conversion to Islam. Similarly, Muslims are coming to the defense of their Christian brothers in two ways. On the one hand, there are secular groups, unarmed and with no political influence, who in Baghdad have organized some protection for persecuted Christian families, including giving them refuge in their own homes; on the other, there are Muslim religious leaders who are speaking out against bloodshed regardless of faith. This is the case of the secretary general to the grand mufti of Iraq who in a signed message said: We hear with sadness and distress about what is happening to our Christian brothers in Iraq. We [. . .] incriminate the perpetrator (sic). A few days ago, Shia leader Hussain Sadr also spoke about the issue. In an interview to a Christian satellite channel, he expressed his solidarity vis-vis his Christian brothers and all of Iraqs minorities. (AsiaNews)

4,000 Christians in India Arrested During Protest

DELHI,India,May29,2007 More than 4,000 protesters were arrested as they marched through the streets of Indias capital, asking the government to break the silence on violence against Christians. Todays rally was organized following recent televised attacks on Christians and increased anti-Christian incidents, AsiaNews reported. Event planners expected 2,000 people, but nearly 5,000 showed up to demonstrate near the Parliament in New Delhi. Speeches at the event demanded protection of human dignity and constitutional rights for the Christian community and other minorities. Police later confirmed the arrest of approximately 4,000 people, though they were released shortly afterward. John Dayal, secretarygeneral of the All India Christian Council, and president of the All India Catholic Union said: This was the first time since November 1997 that such large numbers of Christians have been arrested in the Parliament Street Police Station. It was incredible to see Catholic nuns, Protestant pastors, civil society activists and others singing Christian songs of liberation within the police station. (Zenit)

Congo Prelate Outraged by Slayings Asks Government for Solutions, not Useless Talk
BAKAVU, Congo, May 30, 2007The Church is asking for troops to be sent to the eastern region of Congo, following the slaying of 18 people in Kaniola last weekend. Archbishop FranoisXavier Maroy of Bukavu appealed to the French ambassador in Congo, asking the government to treat the security problem in the east of the country as a priority and stop trying to distract public opinion with proposed plans for negotiations, dialogue and a round table which leads to nothing, Aid to the Church in Need reported. Saturday night and Sunday morning, two villages were attacked in the region of SouthKivu. Besides the 18 killed in their sleep, another 27 were wounded and 18 others kidnapped. The massacre in Kaniola was carried out almost in the presence of the major of the regular army, the archbishop continued. The cries of the people clearly did not disturb his sleep, even though the massacre took place not far from the place where he is stationed. ...As in 1996, our army... was incapable of protecting the people. How are we to interpret the silence of the institutions of the republic, of the head of state, the Parliament, the central government and the military, in the face of these repeated massacres in Kaniola? Archbishop Maroy said. In other countries the taking of a hostage, even if it is only a matter of a single person, immediately prompts the state apparatus to react. So far as the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo is concerned, all they can offer us, in the face of the threat of a new war and while massacres are being perpetrated against the civilian population, is an inter-communicative round-table discussion, instead of tackling the real problems, which involve the restoration of military order and security. Is this complicity or ignorance? (Zenit)

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FROM THE I N B O X

24 Things To Always Remember

Your presence is a present to the world. You are unique and one of a kind. Your life can be what you want it to be. Take the days just one at a time.

And This Too Shall Pass

ne day Solomon decided to humble Benaiah ben Yehoyada, his most trusted minister. He said to him, Benaiah, there is a certain ring that I want you to bring to me. I wish to wear it for Sukkot which gives you six months to find it. If it exists anywhere on earth, your majesty, replied Benaiah, I will find it and bring it to you, but what makes the ring so special? It has magic powers, answered the king. If a happy man looks at it, he becomes sad, and if a sad man looks at it, he becomes happy. Solomon knew that no such ring existed in the world, but he wished to give his minister a little taste of humility. Spring passed and then summer, and still Benaiah had no idea where he could find the ring. On the night before Sukkot, he decided to take a walk in one of he poorest quarters of Jerusalem. He passed by a merchant who had begun to set out the days wares on a shabby carpet. Have you by any chance heard of a magic ring that makes the happy wearer forget his joy and the broken-

Count your blessings, not your troubles. You will make it through whatever comes along. Within you are so many answers. Understand, have courage, be strong. Do not put limits on yourself. So many dreams are waiting to be realized. Decisions are too important to leave to chance. Reach for your peak, your goal and you prize. Nothing wastes more energy than worrying. The longer one carries a problem the heavier it gets. Do not take things too seriously. Live a life of serenity, not a life of regrets. Remember that a little love goes a long way. Remember that a lot goes forever. Remember that friendship is a wise investment. Lifes treasure is people together. Realize that it is never too late. Do ordinary things in an extraordinary way. Have heart and hope and happiness. Take the time to wish upon a start. AND DO NOT EVER FORGET . FOR EVEN A DAY HOW VERY SPECIAL YOU ARE !
rowena.dalanon@cbcpworld.net

hearted wearer forget his sorrows? asked Benaiah. He watched the grandfather take a plain gold ring from his carpet and engrave something on it. When Benaiah read the words on the ring, his face broke out in a wide smile. That night the entire city welcomed in the holiday of Sukkot with great festivity. Well, my friend, said Solomon, have you found what I sent you after? All the ministers laughed and Solomon himself smiled. To everyones surprise, Benaiah held up a small gold ring and declared, Here it is, your majesty! As soon as Solomon read the inscription, the smile vanished from his face. The jeweler had written three Hebrew letters on the gold band: gimel, zayin, yud, which began the words Gam zeh yaavorThis too shall pass. At that moment Solomon realized that all his wisdom and fabulous wealth and tremendous power were but fleeting things, for one day he would be nothing but dust.
rowena.dalanon@cbcpworld.net

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IMPACT June 2007

B O O K REVIEWS
his book opens with a bar rage of questions: Who are the laity? Who are laymen and laywomen? Who are the lay youth? Why are they such? What are they in the Church? Are they but passive members of the Church? Do they always have to depend on the clergy before they could move or act? What can they do and may do on their own instance and initiative? What are their rights vis--vis their obligations as lay persons in the Church? A canon lawyer by discipline and his book is heavily en dorsed by heavy weights. The Foreword is written by Archbishop Antonio Franco, then Apostolic Nuncio to the Philippines. The Preface by Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales, Archbishop of Manila. But, of course, books are neither valued by the size of endorsers nor by the cheers of magazine reviews. Like food, books merit by their own taste and by the time readers have savored on them. Fr. Henry Bocala came to popular memory when, as a student, his design won the his book carries with it a very tall order: plotting a road map for the Philippines for completion by year 2030. It sounds quixotic, at first blush. If there is a thin line that divides between economists, sociologists, millenniarists and religious fanatics, and, recently, demographers and environmentalistsit is their penchant to do business with plotting the future as probably Madame Auring would or any mainstay of Quiapo. But this volume does not carry the stuff of which futurists are made of. It actually stirs a movement, a revolution, his volume is fresh from the oven. This is probably the latest of Nil Guillemettes battery of books published by the Paulines Publishing House. This is the 31st volume of his God-tales. Unlike previous volumes, this one has only 25 stories but exquisitely, if serenely, craf ted like the cameo in his first story. Surprisingly, as it may seem from an author who is a graduate of the Pontifical Biblical Institute with an expertise of the New Testament, but Father

Call of the Laity

Oscar V. Cruz
an anti-gambling tsar by advocacy, Archbishop Cruz again writes with the precision of a watchmaker and a logical clarity that only a good canon lawyer could do. Expectedly, this book proceeds from the perspective of a canon law. But then the opening questions are fleshed out with simplicity that a lay person will find it easy to understand. Hopefully, this would be enough for such a short book which is not intended for experts and academic professors but primarily for the ordinary members of the laity written by an ordinary member of the clergy, forewords the author.

Arise and Walk

Henry Bocala
competition for the official logo of the 10th World Youth Day held in Manila in 1995. Before becoming a priest he was an artist, a freelance writer and an aide to a Senator in the Philippine Congress. The book is subtitled: How does your Christian faith fit in a confused world? The Philippine Congress is not necessarily a diminutive of a confused world. But it is interesting to surmise that the author may have actually posed the question from experience. At his intro, the author says that the book responds to the need for doctrine and spiritual formation, now more urgent than ever in the midst of a world drifting away from God.

Philippine 2030 Journey to Nationhood

Jesus P. Estanislao
if you may. The author exhorts ordinary citizens to take upon themselves the initiative of building up their country without having to wait for disdained politicians. The author quips: We have long waited for Presidents and other elected officials to solve all our problems and deliver genuine development. The wait would be over if ordinary citizens would roll up their sleeves and work together with others. Instead of asking, what can the President do for our sector and community, many more should be asking: what can we do for our country? Read this book and see the road map made by ordinary citizens who did not have to wait for any official authorization to chart a course towards genuine progress.

The Day Shall Dawn

Nil Guillemette
Guillemette has very scanty quotes from the scriptures in this volumeto give way, or so it seems, to spiritual writers whom he cites extensively before every tale. When one reads the story, however, one notices that the biblical values are embedded in every thought and character like a brush stroke of a master in a priceless work of art. Certainly, those who have read Guillemettes previous books will have to crave for more without necessarily admitting that reading his stories is habit formingor should one rather say, spirituality building?

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ENTERTAINMENT

CATHOLIC INITIATIVE FOR ENLIGHTENED MOVIE APPRECIATION

Title: MR. BEANS HOLIDAY Running Time: 90 min. Cast: Rowan Atkinson, Max Baldry, Emma de Caunes, William Dafoe Director: Steve Bendelack Cinematography: Baz Irvine Producers: Peter BennetteDistributor: Universal Jones, Tim Bevan, Eric Pictures Fellner Location: London, Cannes Screenwriters: Aimon France McBurney, Hanish Technical Assessment: McColl Music: Howard Doodall Moral Assessment: Editor: Tony Cranstoun CINEMA Rating: For viewers Genre: Comedy/Adventure of all ages

r. Bean (Rowan Atkinson) attends a church raffle and is elated when he wins a trip to Cannes, in the south of France. Together with the main prize, he is given a video camera to record his experiences. So engrossed is he in taking shots that he is blithely unaware of the inconvenience he causes others. In the course of his journey, he has many hilarious misadventures. But some land him in serious trouble as when he misses trains, loses his money and travel documents and unwittingly separates a famous Russian movie director from his son Stefan (Max Baldry). Usually able to extricate himself from a tight fix in his funny inmitable way, he sets about to reunite father and son, though he does not have a clear idea how to do it. The pair conveniently meets an aspiring actress Sabine (Emma de Caunes) on her way to Caunes to attend a movie premier. Sabine with her brand new car solves their transportation problem. But the three brace for possible trouble when Stefans father announces on TV that his son has been kidnapped. After honing his comic skills at Oxford, Rowan Atkinson has found in Mr. Bean the perfect role for the expression of his talent. So successfully fused is the actor with the fictional character that the viewer can think of both as one. In the first full length feature of Mr. Bean in 1997, the viewer loved his distinctive trademarks: the inarticulate gurgling, the rubbery comic body movements and the equally mobile funny facial expressions. Though some viewers may not be very appreciative of this predominantly slapstick comedy in Mr. Beans Holiday, the second full feature of this character, these same antics can still generate some good laughs. Mr.

Bean is in a foreign country yet his vocabulary is mostly limited to three foreign words (two in French and one in Spanish) so he has to rely on his mimetic skills. The film is low in dialogue and thin in plot but it has highlighted some comic set-pieces which include Mr. Bean consuming a platter of unappealing seafood and performing with aplomb an operatic aria and a repertoire of eclectic dance styles in a market square. The film also projects some beautiful scenery from the world famous beach resort of Cannes. Moreover, movie buffs may satisfy their curiosity regarding the much touted international movie festival periodically held here and perhaps experience

vicariously the ambiance. Though Mr. Beans Holiday may strain the patience of some viewers due to a sense of repetition, it can be a movie the whole family can enjoy. Mr. Beans jokes are clean and innocuous. One can enjoy the hilarious situations and gags without being assaulted with vulgarity or toilet humor, unlike most comedies shown on screen these days which capitalize on sick, gross humor and vulgar dirty language. Children especially love Mr. Bean and even with adults, the film does not leave a bad taste in the mouth. Though there is not much substance in the movie, its light entertainment may be adequate to make one forget problems for a day.

ANSWER TO THE LAST ISSUE: LET NOTHING DISTURB THEE; LET NOTHING DISMAY THEE; ALL THINGS PASS; GOD NEVER CHANGES. PATIENCE ATTAINS ALL THAT IT STRIVES FOR. HE WHO HAS GOD FINDS HE LACKS NOTHING: GOD ALONE SUFFICES. -- ST. TERESA OF AVILA

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IMPACT June 2007

N E W S BRIEFS CHINA IRAQ JAPAN PHILIPPINES

Vessel of 5,000 Rare Convent Robbed, Occu- Country s Whaling Asian Markets Push IlAnimals Found Float- pied Loses Support from legal Ivory ing off the Coast of Fisheries Companies The convent of The international wildChina Chaldean Sisters of the Salife trade-monitoring netEndangered, hunted, smuggled and now abandoned, 5,000 of the worlds rarest animals have been found drifting in a deserted ship near the coast of China. Most of the animals were found alive on the wooden vessel that had lost engine power off Qingzhou Island in the southern province of Guangdong. According to conservation groups, the haul was discovered on one of the worlds most lucrative and destructive smuggling routes: from the threatened jungles of Southeast Asia to the restaurant tables of southern China.
ISRAEL

cred Heart in the largely Christian Dora quarter of Baghdad, where an antiChristian campaign of persecution continues, was robbed and occupied by suspected terrorists, reported Asianews. The source said alleged members of the Shiite militants broke into the convent while the nuns occupying the Angel Raphael convent were away. Upon the sisters return they found everything had been stolen and the convent taken over for military operations.
NEPAL

Bad News for Nepal Monkeys

A team of experts from Nepal Bio-Medical Research Center (NBMRC), Lalitpur have started a scientific research on rhesus monkeys by capturing them from around Bhutandevi, Hetauda. Dr Rupak Khadka, a member of the research team, said the collected monkeys would be used for research of vaccines against dreadful diseases like HIV/ AIDS, TB and Malaria. Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation (DNPWC) is paid Rs 25,000 for each monkey captured and used for the research, he said. The center has already taken permission for collection of a total of 300 healthy rhesus monkeys from Hetauda and other parts of the country.

Govt Outlaws Animal Testing for Cosmetic Products

Animal shelters across Israel prepared to take in new tenants, after the Knesset, Israels legislature, approved a law outlawing all animal testing for cosmetic and cleaning products. The law would free the 2,000-3,000 animals that are currently used to test the products. This is an important law that reflects how our society is changing its regard for animal rights, said MK Gideon Saar (Likud), who proposed the law. He added that the law still provides for animal testing for medicinal products and the health industry.

The fourth largest fisheries company here, Kyokuyo, has pledged to stop its sale of whale meat in Japan. Its decision follows a campaign led by various international environment organizations. In April, the coalition of environmental and animal welfare groups called on American company True World Foods, which partnered with Kyokuyo to distribute sushi in the United States, to persuade Kyokuyo to stop selling whale products. Kyokuyo said it has ceased production of whale products and is in the process of selling off its remaining stockpile. Without companies like Kyokuyo, Japans whaling industry will fall flat.

work Traffic reported illegal ivory is expanding and even reaching the Philippines. The syndicates gather ivory in Africa for export to East Asian countries. The biggest market is China, though there is also significant trade to other countries like Thailand. Traffic said there are 92 illegal ivory seizures per month, and the number of large hauls has doubled in a decade.
SRI LANKA

Groups Warn Vs. Disastrous Civil War Effect on Children

It is an undisputed fact that during times of conflict children bears the maximum brunt of it being the most vulnerable section of the society. The over two decades civil war in Sri Lanka is having a disastrous effect on children, warned various local and global humanitarian organizations, including the UNICEF. Because of the long term conflict, the groups, lamented many children are living in fear and insecurity, deprived of school, play and contact with other children, and suffer from psychological and social trauma. The groups also cried foul over trafficking of minors and recruitment of child soldiers.

INDIA

4,000 Christians Nabbed during Protest

Around 4,000 demonstrators were arrested during a massive protest rally outside the Parliament in New Delhi to condemn rising violent attacks against Christians. Protesters urged the Indian government to deliver appropriate actions as they call for protection of human dignity and constitutional rights for the Christian community and other minorities. Arrested demonstrators were released shortly afterwards.

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