BOGUS AGRARIAN REFORM ENDS IN THE PHILIPPINES

By Dante Pastrana
5 August 2014

The Philippine agrarian reform land acquisition program expired on June 30. The
agrarian reform law, known as the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), was a
sham. Passed in 1988 under President Corazon Aquino, the mother of current President
Benigno Aquino III, it was premised, like all “land reform” under capitalism, on the defense
of bourgeois property.
Under the law, the landlord was to be compensated at market value. The supposed
beneficiary, the landless tiller, was to be condemned to 30 years of debt servitude, paying
amortization at 6 percent annual interest for a 3-hectare farm lot, even as the globalization of
production put paid to the small peasant farm.
The law was riddled with loopholes that allowed the landed elite total control over the
process, including under what conditions the law applied and who could be beneficiaries of
the distributed land. Deploying political influence and state violence, the landed elite,
capitalist landlords and agribusinesses retained their stranglehold over the rural masses.
However, the whole sordid exercise of implementing CARP cost billions of pesos in
government funds. By 2009, the ruling elites had had enough. The Philippine Congress, after
extending the law for the third time, legislated that further land acquisitions of private
agricultural holdings were to finally end on June 30, 2014.
By the government’s own figures, 76 percent of all land distributed was either
government-owned or voluntarily offered by their owners. That is to say, most of the plots
redistributed were no longer economical to operate.
The landholdings left untouched by CARP belong to the oligarchs who run the country.
According to a Business Mirror report, CARP did not touch a 590-hectare block belonging to
the Ayala family; the Cosunji’s 845 hectares; a 764-hectare farm owned by Eduardo
Cojuangco, a relative of President Aquino; and the 1,178 hectares of untitled lands claimed by
the Fortich family. On Negros Island alone, over 128,000 hectares are controlled by 188
haciendas.
Extreme poverty and unemployment afflict the vast majority of the rural population.
Among the so-called beneficiaries of agrarian reform, 52 percent were reported to be living
below the country’s austere poverty line. Since CARP’s implementation, landlord thugs or the
police have murdered over 600 farmers who attempted to secure land under CARP’s false
promise.
Significantly, the re-concentration of distributed land, abetted by the government, is well
underway through the “aryendo” system, which pushes the beneficiaries of agrarian reform,
under the compulsion of poverty, to sell the control of their land for a pittance.
A stark example is the Hacienda Luisita owned by President Aquino’s family. It was
subdivided and redistributed to its tenants and workers with much fanfare last December.
 The Rappler news web site reported that, within seven months, 80 percent of the
beneficiaries fell under the aryendo system. One “aryendador” alone is estimated to control
300 hectares of the 4,000 hectares that were distributed.
On the day of CARP’s expiration, 1,000 members of the Maoist Kilusang Mambubukid
ng Pilipinas (Philippine Peasant Movement) and its partner, the Bayan Muna party list
organization, demonstrated in Metro Manila, the national capital. They briefly barricaded the
head office of the agrarian reform department and burned an effigy of President Aquino.
The Maoists called upon the legislature, dominated by the leading members of each of the
major landowning families, to support for the passage of a new agrarian reform bill sponsored
by Bayan Muna. The Maoists have for years heavily promoted the new bill, labeled the
Genuine Agrarian Reform Bill. It is a political charade, which has no chance of passing
through the legislature, and exists solely to imbue the thoroughly corrupt political
establishment with a veneer of credibility by pretending that it might.
On the same day, the Maoist breakaway organization Akbayan and its peasant arm, the
Save Agrarian Reform Alliance (SARA), appealed to Aquino, with whom it is in a political
coalition. They called upon him to fire the agrarian reform department secretary who, they
claimed, lacked the political will to use the “powerful” agrarian reform law against the landed
elite.
Both Bayan Muna and Akbayan are laboring to cultivate illusions among the working
masses in the state, which is the instrument of the bourgeoisie and landowning classes.
The various Maoist factions represent privileged layers of the petty bourgeoisie
ensconced in the bureaucracies of conglomerates, businesses, trade union federations, non-
government organizations, the civil service, the academe, the Roman Catholic Church and the
military in the Philippines. Their privileges are rooted in the stability of the nation-state.
With the deepening global economic crisis and mounting social inequality, these layers
are acutely conscious that the deep gulf between the ruling elites and the working masses is
leading to a social explosion. Their proposals seek to defuse mounting frustration and anger
among impoverished farmers and landless peasants.
These events demonstrate, yet again, the truth of Leon Trotsky’s Theory of Permanent
Revolution. In countries of belated capitalist development in the epoch of imperialism, the
bourgeoisie and its various petty bourgeois representatives, including the Maoists, are
organically incapable of carrying out basic democratic tasks, including a radical redistribution
of land and other basic measures, to meet the needs of peasants and the rural poor.

Submitted by:

MA. KIEL PATRICIA R. ETCOBANEZ

AB Political Science III-B

MA. KIEL PATRICIA R. ETCOBANEZ Social Science 4

AB Political Science III-B Oct. 04, 2016

ASSESSMENT OF THE COMPREHENSIVE AGRARIAN REFORM PROGRAM

There is no consensus definition or description of what the outcomes of the Comprehensive Agrarian
Reform Program or CARP for years of its existence and implementation. Of course, there are varieties of
perceptions as to its effectivity and beneficiality to the vulnerable sectors of society especially the landless
farmers or tillers. Some would say that the CARP is indeed helpful in the development of our state while
others would continue to criticize or scrutinize the said program for its ineffective results. One of those
critics of CARP is the author of the article entitled, “Bogus Agrarian Reform Ends in the Philippines,” Mr.
Dante Pastrana.
Before giving my view or assessment on the program, I would first like to cite or discuss several
pertinent facts about CARP.
CARP is a government initiative that aims to grant landless farmers and farmworkers ownership of
agricultural lands. It was signed into law by President Corazon C. Aquino on June 10, 1988, and was
scheduled to have been completed in 1998. The program was envisioned by the 1987 Constitution as a
tool towards social justice through the redistribution of the country’s wealth thereby redefining land
relations and empowering landless farmers and farmworkers. The CARP became the centerpiece program
of the government during the administration of President Corazon Aquino. CARP aims to redistribute the
land, regardless of crops or fruit produced, to farmers and regular farm workers who are landless,
irrespective of tenurial arrangements, to include all factors and support services designed to lift the
economic status of the beneficiaries.
On August 7, 2009, an amendatory law that extends yet again the deadline of distributing agricultural
lands to farmers for five years which amends other provisions stated in CARP was signed into law. This
amendatory law is known as the CARPER, or the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program Extension with
Reforms.
The agrarian reform program in the Philippine has three main objectives:
(1) promoting efficiency (by raising productivity);
(2) promoting social justice or equity (a more equitable distribution of land and hence society); and
(3) a counter-insurgency tool (addressing allegedly the root cause of social unrest in the countryside
which is the highly unequal land distribution - which in turn is the main mobilizing agenda of the local
Communist movement and its supporters.)
In the first two objectives, which are obviously in the domain of economics, CARP was a
failure. This is because with the underfunding of the government in CARP, the program
wasn’t able to really execute their mission in helping or assisting the farmers with projects or
services that could help in their work. Thus, the CARP wasn’t really able to generally carry
out their programs in promoting efficiency through productivity growth.
Second, the CARP has not really been able to promote social justice or equity since in the
Philippines, the bourgeoisie(wealthy landowners) and proletariats (landless farmers) still
exist, and it is alleged that there is nothing that the CARP was able to do in order to adress
this rampancy of inequality. For example, as stated in the article above, it seemed that landed
elite were allowed total control over the process, including under what conditions the law
applied and who could be beneficiaries of the distributed land. Thus, these landed elites,
capitalist landlords and agribusinesses retained their stranglehold over the rural masses. A
stark example is President Aquino’s family who owns the Hacienda Luisita.
The last objective of CARP is in the realm of political economy but there has been no
systematic attempt to measure the performance of CARP vis-a-vis this third objective.
To sum up, it can be concluded that was not that really successful. Several challenges and problems
impaired the program in carrying out its goals. Some of the lands or the CARPable lands were left
untouched due to the influence of the elite, several anomalies regarding the distribution of lands arised as
well, the fund coming from the government is not enough to provide support and assistance to the
farmers, some or most of the farmers remained poor and inferior to other people and other alike
circumstances. And also what has been the Achilles heel of CARPP is its inability to raise farm
productivity, and hence income hopefully leading to welfare gains of the small farmer-
beneficiaries
But CARP is not a total failure as it registered remarkable success in one of its most
important components: land acquisition and distribution (LAD). By the end of 2014, it is
estimated that around 5 million hectares of land will have been distributed, which is half of
the cultivable lands in the country.

To reiterate, CARP is not that successful, but it is not a total failure.