BACOLOD CITY, Philippines (Mindanao Examiner / Nov. 5, 2008) - Filipino Farmers demanding government action on several long-pending land cases have laid “siege” Tuesday on the provincial office here of the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) and painted its gates with the notice: “Closed until further reforms.”
“We are declaring the office of the DAR closed until further reforms,” said Jose Rodito Angeles, president of Task Force Mapalad, during a symbolic “shutdown” ceremony outside the gates, which gave way to the onrush of protesting farmers, prompting the security guards to fire warning shots.
Angeles said that DAR had stopped processing the pending land cases after the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law (CARL) expired last June.
“DAR has become a warehouse of non-performing assets. No matter what we do, despite our repeated pleas and protests, and despite the fact that the CARP process can still continue until the end of this year, the DAR simply ignored our demand for installation of farmers who have been holders of Certificate of Land Ownership Award (CLOA) and for protection of farmer-beneficiaries (FB) who are being harassed, threatened and evicted by former hacienda owners,” Angeles said in a statement.
Among the pending land cases which the TFM farmers want DAR to immediately resolve are the generation and issuance of CLOA for FBs of Hacienda Bacan in the village of Guintubhan, Isabela; the installation and protection of FBs in Hacienda Canaan in the village of Mabini, Cadiz City; and protection of FBs in Hacienda Victoria in the village of Camangcang, Isabela, among others.
Angeles said that the 155-hectare Hacienda Bacan, owned by the family of First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo, had long been valued by the Land Bank of the Philippines but the bank, for unexplained reasons, had refused to issue a certificate of cash deposit in favor of the landowner.
TFM had earlier demanded that DAR already proceed with the generation and issuance of CLOA for FBs of the Arroyo-owned hacienda in view of Land Bank’s non-compliance with DAR’s repeated order for issuance of certificate of deposit.
In the case of the 533-hectare Hacienda Canaan and the 133-hectare Hacienda Victoria, the farmers are waiting for installation and are being subjected to harassment and intimidation from armed men who are either alleged members of the Revolutionary Proletarian Army (in the case of Hacienda Victoria) or the Philippine Army soldiers and hacienda security guards (in the case of Hacienda Canaan).
Last week, the farmers padlocked the DAR office in a show of protest, but TFM-Negros spokesperson Edna Sobrecaray said: “We are now sending the message that we will go on protesting, we will not stop protesting, CARP or no CARP, until our just demands are met.”
Sobrecaray added: “We know that DAR cannot and will not anymore pursue its CARP mandate. We cannot hope from this agency now because it has become hostage to the power politics of influential people in government. Malacañang and its allies are stalling and waiting for 2008 to end to finally kill CARP, but we will go on with the struggle for land even beyond 2008.”
In Manila, peasants were also protesting the government's failure to grant them the lands they till. Six of the farmers are in hunger strike, but one of them collapsed recently and rushed to hospital. (With a report from Lani Factor)
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