THE militant peasant group Kilusang
Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) yesterday accused Malacañang of
duping the Sumilao farmers into thinking that they have obtained
a win-win solution to their dispute with San Miguel Foods Inc.
over the 144-hectare Sumilao farmland in Bukidnon.
KMP chair Rafael Mariano said the compromise
deal brokered by Manila Archbishop Gaudencio Rosales and
Malacañang between SMFI and the Sumilao farmers is a
"bittersweet" example of the uselessness of the Comprehensive
Agrarian Reform Program (CARP).
"It is bittersweet because with the
compromise deal, at least 50 hectares of the original land will
be given to the Sumilao farmers (by a deed of donation) but
still they have to pay for the 94 hectares remaining to complete
the 144 hectares they demanded. But by asking the farmers to pay
for a land that is supposedly theirs, the deal contradicts the
principle of social justice and genuine agrarian reform,"
Mariano said.
"Malacanang, the Department of Agrarian
Reform and SMFI are in essence duping the Sumilao farmers
because there is no guarantee that the land, even the 50
hectares supposedly donated to them, would remain theirs. Based
on the CARP they have to pay for the 94 hectares on its present
market value and in reality majority of farmers who were
so-called CARP beneficiaries went bankrupt by paying land
amortization and they were evicted from their lands eventually,"
Mariano said.
Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita, however,
was of a different mind, encouraging parties involved in land
disputes to use the SMFI-Sumilao farmers agreement as a model to
resolve their differences.
In an interview at the Aplaya Resort in
Calatagan, Batangas, Ermita said that while contending parties
may exhaust all legal and administrative measures available to
them, settling the issue among themselves would help expedite
the case and would "allow the courts and the Executive to focus
on other matters."
The disputed land in Sumilao was awarded by
the Ramos administration in 1994 to the Quisumbing-owned NQSR
Management and Development Corp., with the agreement that it
would be converted into an agro-industrial land. The NQSR,
however, sold the land to the SMFI, prompting the farmers to
bring the issue to the Supreme Court, and later to Malacañang
for intervention.
"It is very insulting for President Arroyo to
say that the Sumilao case shows that CARP has to be extended,"
Mariano continued. "It is through CARP that the land was taken
from the Sumilao farmers in the first place but it is not
through CARP that it was settled. It was only with the farmers'
firm resolve to own their land and the support of the Church and
other sectors that pushed Malacañang and SMFI to work for a
settlement.
"The Sumilao case is just a single land dispute. What about
other farmers that number in the millions that do not own the
land they till? Do they also have to march from the farms to
Malacañang so that they would have the right to their lands?
CARP has made landlessness in our country worse, it has so many
loopholes that landlords and the government itself has used it
to evict farmers from their land. It is high time that this
anti-farmer law be junked and replaced with the Genuine Agrarian
Reform Bill or HB 3059, that will ensure that no case like
Sumilao will happen again," Mariano stressed. - Job
Realubit with Jocelyn Montemayor
