by ANNIE RUTH C. SABANGAN

GETTING the land — not landing in jail — was the hope Alexander Celis nurtured when he and other Negros farmers trekked recently to the Land Registration Authority (LRA) office in Quezon City. The main reason for their trip was merely to convince President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to speed up agrarian reform in a Negros sugar plantation being linked to her husband, First Gentleman Jose Miguel ‘Mike’ Arroyo.

	JAILED FOR THE 'PROMISED' LAND. Negros farmers land in jail after asking President Arroyo to fulfill her promise of giving up the hacienda that reportedly belongs to her husband. [photo by AR Sabangan]

The 35-year-old Celis says the 157-hectare Hacienda Bacan in Negros Occidental's Guintubhan village in Isabela town was among the pieces of agricultural land owned by the Arroyo family. In 2001, the President promised to distribute this and other Arroyo landholdings to farmers under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP).

"Seven years have passed but we remain landless,” says Celis. “Worse, we were imprisoned for simply asking President Arroyo to fulfill her own promise."

"Parang niloloko kami (We can't help but feel that we are being fooled),” he adds. “Habang pinaglalaban namin ang karapatan namin sa lupa, lalo nila kaming pinahihirapan. Hinaharangan nila ang CARP sa bawa't kilos namin. (The more we assert our rights to the land, the more they make it difficult for us. They are blocking CARP every step of the way)."

LAW CIRCA 1988

Republic Act No. 6657 instituted the CARP in 1988 to promote social justice through a mechanism for more equitable distribution and ownership of land. It originally had a lifespan of 10 years, but was extended for another 10 years in 1998 due to delays in land distribution and lack of budget allocation. There are moves in the present Congress to further extend it, with at least 65 percent of agricultural lands still not covered by CARP.

Last Thursday (November 27), the police arrested nine (including Celis) of the 30 or so protesting farmers and detained them at Central Police District's Station 10 in Kamuning for allegedly violating Article 146 of the Revised Penal Code.

Article 146 prohibits assemblies or meetings that have to do with crimes of treason, rebellion, or insurrection, and carrying of unlicensed firearms by participants. The LRA filed the complaint against the farmers.

	Location map of Isabela, Negros Occidental courtesy of Wikipedia

Witnesses to the farmers' picket at the LRA office have been clear and consistent: They did not hear the farmers call for President Arroyo’s ouster or the overthrow of her administration. Neither did they see the farmers carry any weapon during the assembly.

"We were just shouting, urging the President not to renege on her promise," Celis says. "We were just reminding her that she has to give the hacienda to us, and that the LRA should also help us get the land."

LRA is an agency under the Department of Justice that is mandated, among others, to provide legal and technical assistance to the courts on land registration cases. It is also tasked to extend assistance to other agencies of the government in the implementation of the agrarian reform program.

On Friday, the farmers were freed after the LRA dropped the complaint amid calls of support for the farmers' cause from religious and civil society groups. But it may take more doing before Hacienda Bacan is turned over — if at all — to the likes of Celis. After all, the CARP ends this month and, according to the farmers, they are up against no less than the President’s husband.

GLORIA'S OFFER

Based on the calculations of the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR), it takes only about five to 15 months for a landholding to be acquired and distributed to farmer-beneficiaries under CARP. The process supposedly becomes faster when the landowner voluntarily offers his or her farm for agrarian reform.

Section 3 of RA 6657 defines agrarian reform as the “redistribution of lands, regardless of crops or fruits produced, to farmers and regular farm workers who are landless.” It also pertains to “all other arrangements alternative to the physical redistribution of lands, such as production or profit-sharing, labor administration and the distribution of shares of stock which will allow beneficiaries to receive a just share of the fruits of the lands they work.”

Landlords are supposed to retain only a maximum of five hectares of the lands covered by CARP, and three hectares for each of their children. The rest should be distributed to the farmer-tillers.

Many landlords, however, have found a loophole to avoid relinquishing their lands: land reclassification. Lands classified by local zoning ordinances as residential, commercial, and industrial lands are excluded from CARP.

By its public statements, the Arroyo family, though, did not seem to be among such clans. The President’s offer of Arroyo land for CARP seven years ago was quickly followed by another voluntary offer by her brother-in-law, the First Gentleman’s younger sibling, Ignacio ‘Iggy’ Arroyo. Yet it was only in 2007 that DAR was able to start processing the claims of the Bacan farmers who encountered last month yet another obstacle at the Registry of Deeds (ROD).

“It was delaying reform in the hacienda,” says farmhand Rogelio Salva, 58, describing the hurdle they found themselves facing at the ROD. “So we had no choice but to elevate our claim to the LRA."

To effect the transfer of the ownership of the land to farmers, the ROD in Negros Occidental must cancel the hacienda's original title so that this could be transferred to the Republic of the Philippines. This would then enable the DAR to eventually generate certificates of land ownership award (CLOAs) for the farmers.