Land reform redux

The world’s modern democracies started their trek to modernization through land reform. Either they implement land reform or the landed classes may make a comeback and ruin the democratic republics. Thus, it can safely be said that the main democratic content of the revolutions that resulted in the setting up of republics worldwide is land reform. Land reform freed the peasant majorities of these republics, dispossesed the old ruling classes of the economic basis of their political power and prepared the nation for industrialization.

The development of capitalist republics into imperialist states made it necessary for the latter to invade other smaller and weaker countries and transform them into pseudo-republics, neocolonies and colonies. They function as bases for military attacks, markets for surplus goods or sources of raw materials.

It was at this time when the Philippine Republic of 1898 came into being and the very reason why it was still-born, so to speak. The elites readily succumbed to the liberal-democratic pretensions of the imperialists. The democratic content of the revolution was never operationalized.

Anyway, I remember all these amid the fantastic tale of “landlord-Left” collusion to “kill” the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), courtesy of the military’s favorite leftist party, the Akbayan Citizens’ Action Party.

For Akbayan Rep. Risa Hontiveros, the Bayan Muna-led bloc in Congress conspired with landlords in the House to deny Akbayan’s lust for an extension of the CARP which expired last week.

What flotsam! Hogwash! The long record of CARP in so-called land reform is there for all of us to see. It is a record of failures, failures and more failures. Until it breathed its last, CARP was, for farmers, a deceptive law.

Unfortunately for all of us, the Inquirer and some pundits consider CARP as the best the Establishment can offer, never mind the facts. Never mind if one of the principal authors considered it a corpse of his original proposal.

Bayan Muna has replied to Akbayan and to the Inquirer editorial published yesterday.

Bayan Muna is advancing its own bill to replace CARP. The bill is called the Genuine Agrarian Reform Bill (GARB) and is backed by the country’s largest peasant organizations.

Akbayan must blame the Arroyo administration for not doing enough to compel Congress to extend CARP. That is not the fault of Bayan Muna or its other Left opponents.

GARB is the Left’s effort to bring to fore the long-running denial of the democratic demands of the peasantry. By filing it, the Left is challenging the status quo to address the main reason why the insurgency remains unchallenged in the hinterlands and the countryside.

What happens if GARB is not passed? Well, the armed elements of the Left, notably the New People’s Army and the Communist Party of the Philippines will continue to implement the minimum contents of their Revolutionary Guide to Land Reform. They may not be able to confiscate landlord holdings, but they can lower land rent, lower or eliminate usury, and implement other similar reforms within their territories. They will do so not only because the Establishment does not wish to do so. They will do so because that is their avowed and public commitment. Indeed, the Establishment has been put on notice by the CPP that its agrarian revolution will only advance.

I think the problem with the position of Akbayan is that its wrong premise, that CARP is land reform. But it is not. We cannot fault Bayan Muna for saying so, and for advancing what it thinks is the genuine article.

The long history, gazillions of funds, and peasant experiences under CARP should have compelled Akbayan and other organizations to take stock of the law, to assess it. But no, the position was to extend it, giving everyone the illusion that it was effective. No CARP, or no land reform.

Of course, that’s Akbayan’s problem. I leave it to them to untie this Gordian knot. They must justify to the nation’s peasants why this law enacted in 1987 still continue to fail them and why it must be extended. Kanilang-kanila na yan. They might as well call it Akbayan Land Reform Law or Akbayan Law or Hontiveros Law.

Having said that, I just wish to state that I am disappointed by the Inquirer editorial. It was so lame for the paper to limit the definition of land reform to CARP (the Akbayan line) and thus fail to inform the middle class about authentic land reform. The editorial does not solve any problem and only gushes at Akbayan’s temerity to champion CARP at the expense of Bayan Muna’s “radical” position.

Finally, let us remember how Congress acted in the immediate aftermath of the Hacienda Luisita massacre… Who were the foes and friends of farmers? What law was principally used against the farmers?