Groups say Marcos’ first SONA lacks new agrarian reform agenda

Progressive groups on Tuesday slammed President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s first State of the Nation Address (SONA), saying there was no pronouncement on crafting a new agrarian reform measure.

“There was no legislative agenda for a new agrarian reform law, thus, there would be no new agrarian reform beneficiaries, and landless peasants and farm workers in the country are doomed to be landless,” Anakpawis Party-list said in a statement.

Likewise, Unyon ng mga Manggagawa sa Agrikultura (UMA) chairperson John Milton “Ka Butch” Lozande said that while Marcos’ call to erase the debt of agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs) and implement a one-year moratorium on amortization payments was welcome, “these measures were hardly enough, and did nothing to reverse the damage already inflicted on farmers by sham land reform policies.”

Marcos, on Monday, said he will issue an order imposing a one-year moratorium on the payment of land amortization and interest payments to aid land reform beneficiaries. 

Finance Secretary Benjamin Diokno said the Department of Finance (DOF) has yet to compute the revenue impact of the moratorium.

However, he presumed that its impact will be minimal, since “hindi naman talaga nakakakolekta doon eh [there are really no collections from there].”

Marcos also asked Congress to pass a law that will amend Section 26 of Republic Act 6657, or the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law of 1998.

The President said this law will emancipate the agrarian reform beneficiaries from the debt burden.

However, Lozande slammed “the lack of a concrete proposal for a new agrarian reform program.”

The peasant leader said that both the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) and its extension CARPER had already expired, and it “was high time for government to look into the Genuine Agrarian Reform Bill (GARB) repeatedly filed by the Makabayan bloc in Congress.”

“Genuine agrarian reform distributes land to the tillers for free, and supports the production of food staples with subsidies to food producers. Our farmers deserve so much more than mere loans and a year-long moratorium on amortization payments,” he said.

Lozande said that too many agrarian reform beneficiaries had already lost their land to corporations in lopsided leaseback arrangements and other duplicitous agri-business venture agreements (AVAs) state bureaucrats themselves encouraged, brokered, and benefited from. Marcos, Jr.’s pronouncements would only maintain the status quo, not improve it, he said.

“The moratorium on the payment and condonation on the land amortization do not provide an impediment to the threat of cancellation of emancipation patents, certificate of land transfer and certificate of land ownership awards, via the various loopholes of the Republic Act 6657 Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law, thus, ARBs could still be ejected from their lands. Moreover, this does not give protection to productive agricultural lands from land use conversion,” he said. — BM, GMA News