The militant Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) chided Malacanang for pushing amendments on the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law (CARL) so that a portion of the ill-gotten wealth of the Marcoses to the human rights victims. 

According to Danilo “Ka Daning” Ramos, secretary general of the group, “Congress should not burden itself with amending the CARL, and should scrap it entirely. Basically this law which purportedly was created for peasants for distributing lands to them, is patently anti-peasant and is used to further concentrate land in the hands of the landlords,”

“In our view all the Marcos wealth should be given to their human rights victims, and not be predominantly used in the bogus land reform program under the CARP. If this happens then the money that the Marcoses stole would just be reconcentrated on the landlords, many of which are Marcos cronies, who helped him oppress the nation during his regime, a glaring example of which is Danding Cojuangco,” added the peasant leader.

“Besides the government’s claim that there are only just 800,000 hectares of its target land left to be distributed is a lot of hog wash. Most of the so-called distributed lands under the CARP are still under court litigation so there is no actual distribution of the land. Another point is that there are so many exemptions and schemes on CARL that it is more of as a landlord law rather than a peasant law,” expounded Ramos.

“Lest we forget the Stock Distribution Option (SDO) that was used in Hacienda Luisita is a scheme under the CARP and it removed the farmers right to their land in favor of the Cojuangco-Aquino clan. “Para nitong ginigisa ang mga magsaska sa sarili nilang mantika,” ended Ramos. # # #
 

KMP - 7 February 2005