EXTEND CARP TO SATISFY A BISHOP'S VENGEANCE?
CEBU CITY, MAY 9, 2008 (STAR) INSIDE CEBU By Bobit S. Avila - Do you know why the Titanic sank? Because its owners were so arrogant and proud and boasted that she was unsinkable! Do you know why Germany lost World War II despite their technological superiority to the Allies? Because Der Fuhrer Adolph Hitler refused to listen to the advice of his generals and fought a war on two fronts!Do you know why the Philippines will continue to be poor and underdeveloped? Because the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) is using “vengeance” as a reason for asking for the extension of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) despite the fact that CARP was a failure!
So one of the reasons why the CBCP wants CARP extended is because its president, Archbishop Angel Lagdameo, wanted the ancestral lands of the Arroyo family to be part of the 1.3 million hectares of land to be given to the landless? Since CARP was enacted 20 years ago to give land to the landless, our priorities have changed – and self-sufficiency in our food supply should now be our primary goal, not the vengeance of a bishop!
It is a fact that former Agrarian Reform (DAR) Secretary Heherson Alvarez himself declared in March 1998 that CARP was a failure. Back then, Alvarez said, “It is not so much that the promised lands were not distributed, but the harvest of plenty has not materialized. Farmers now hold the title to the land they till, but they remain poor and the land is still unproductive.” Alvarez added: “The farmers have been liberated from the bondage to their landlords, but not from the loan sharks. The difficulty of getting loans from banks has forced CARP beneficiaries to turn to loan sharks, thus sacrificing productivity.”
CARP is a failure and the CBCP wants to extend it? Studies have shown that the biggest problem in the Philippines is not because we’re poor despite our industriousness or because we’re corrupt! It’s our bad attitude which oftentimes borders on stupidity! I dare say that the CBCP is recklessly endorsing the extension of CARP with the full knowledge that this program is riddled with hundreds of corruption cases in court and worse, it is directly linked to our dismal food production. Extend CARP and Filipinos will starve and when the blaming starts, the CBCP should better be prepared to accept the blame!
Indeed without a clear credit facility, the farmers cannot buy seeds, farm implements and fertilizers or simply keep up with their operating expenses. This is something that the CBCP or those who openly declare their support for the extension of CARP should look into before sending our nation toward another disaster called CARP. This is not to mention the corruption that has plagued the DAR which you can find from all the land cases that DAR was involved and lost, where the government had to pay millions in damages and no one, but no one was sent to jail for their foul deeds!
I got a copy of a document of the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council’s (PARC) Audit Management and Investigation Committee covering the years 1996-1997 regarding CARP from my friend Silverio Berenguer of the Land Owners Association and I can only wish and hope that our dear beloved eminence Ricardo Cardinal Vidal would secure his own copy or at least have one for the CBCP for them to look into this carefully.
Since this is a very thick document, allow me only a few examples as to what happened to CARP. This is a document of all the cases and problems that the DAR has been facing and the majority of Filipinos don’t even know these are happening. This is why it pains me to hear the CBCP or Cardinal Vidal supporting the extension of CARP without checking what really happened because extending this program means extending the corruption in the DAR! I thought the CBCP was against corruption? What gives?
In one of the documents I got, I read that members of the Manaoag Multi-Purpose Cooperative Inc. were given a loan of P12,000 each allegedly funded by the Land Bank of the Philippines. But in truth, they received only P3,000 each. So who “profited” from the members of this cooperative in Cauayan, Isabela? I’m sure that there are other similar cases that the CBCP didn’t even know about?
Parts of the audit reports are quite revealing. For instance, in Dumanjug and Oslob in Cebu, 10 lots covered by farmer beneficiaries were actually used for residential purposes in sheer violation of Section 44 of RA 6940. There were seven Certificates of Land Ownership Award (CLOAs) given to farmer beneficiaries who were not even of age and not even heads of their families in Borbon, Cebu and in Bayawan, Negros Oriental. This is a tip of a horde of corruption cases… yet CBCP wants to extend corruption?
Chief News Editor: Sol Jose Vanzi
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