In a news conference in Quezon City today, the militant Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) today said that after 16 years, the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) had been “a milking cow of big landlords”.

KMP secretary general Danilo Ramos said “instead of distributing lands to the people behind the plow, the CARP only strengthened the monopoly and control of big landlords to vast tracts of landholdings.”

“Untouchable landlords, like Eduardo “Danding” Cojuangco Jr., makes money out of CARP,” Ramos said stressing that “Cojuangco’s landholdings remains intact while the Department of Agrarian Reform claims that it has been bought and distributed.”

KMP’s Ramos also lashed out at agrarian reform secretary Jose Mari Ponce’s statement that only 800,000 hectares are yet to be covered by the program and needs to be extended for another two years (from 2008-2010).

“Secretary Ponce is daydreaming. In fact, 94 percent of the lands allegedly distributed under the bogus CARP are contested in various administrative and regular courts,” Ramos added. 

He said that “aside from the DAR, millions of farmers face cases like ejectment, forcible entry, unlawful detainer, robbery of farm produce and other criminal charges in municipal and regional trial courts. Criminalization of agrarian cases has become a legal maneuver of big landlords to evade land distribution and circumvent the already sham CARP.”

“In Hacienda Luisita in Tarlac, Hacienda San Antonio and Sta. Isabel in Isabela province, in Cojuangco’s Hacienda Pontevedra in Negros, the CARP was used to evade physical land distribution. In these areas, the military have also wreak havoc against peasants defending and asserting their rights to the land,” he stressed.  

“CARP has not been a social justice measure to emancipate farmers from centuries-old feudal bondage, instead, it works as a civilian-military counter-insurgency program,” the KMP leader said.

The KMP added that the planned extension of the CARP for another two years is “an admission that the program is a complete failure.”

“In fact, CARP’s 10-year extension (1999-2008) is not yet over and the DAR is now hurriedly pushing for another two years. For the Filipino peasantry, CARP is dead and deserves to be junked,” Ramos said. 

The KMP also announced to greet the 16th year of the bogus CARP with a 5,000-strong peasant protest against land-grabbing and militarization. Simultaneous peasant protests will also be launched in major urban-centers across the country.  # # #
 

KMP - 8 July 2004