Hundreds of landless farmers from Negros Occidental and Batangas staged a die in protest in front of the main office of the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) in Quezon City on Monday, February 19, demanding the immediate distribution of private agricultural lands (PALs) as promised last year by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.

The protesters included farmers from La-iya, Batangas who are demanding that the Land Bank of the Philippines (Landbank) hasten the issuance of the certificate of deposit (COD) to the account of the Batangas landowner since a memorandum of valuation (MOV) had already been received by the Hennessy Corp., three years ago.

It turns out that Landbank has no money to pay for the land. Under the law, the COD is issued 30 days after the landowner receives the MOV.

Farmers from Negros Occidental demand all 12 haciendas covering 4,654 hectares controlled by the late business tycoon Eduardo Cojuangco distributed to thousands of landless farmers.

They also demanded that the agreements between their cooperatives and Cojuangco be voided for his failure to pay just wages and remit the farmers’ share of the profit of the agribusiness, which apparently has been losing under Cojuangco management.

The protesters belong to Task Force Mapalad (TFM), a national federation of farmers and farmworkers.

TFM said in his March 19, 2018 letter to the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council (PARC), Cojuangco confessed that the corporation had been “incurring substantial losses over the 12 years.” The South Negros Joint Venture Corp. (SJNVC) incurred total losses of P2.9 billion from 2005 to 2016.

The TFM farmers also condemned the alleged plot of the Cojuangco group to parcelize the land and install their own cohorts while kicking out the legitimate ARBs to ensure that the SJNVC, which expires this year, will continue under the control of the Cojuangcos.

TFM said the Cojuangcos were forced to transfer the management of the haciendas to the Caña Dulce Agro Industrial, Inc. – represented by Miguel S. Hinojales, Lagrimas H. Llorca and Michael Andrew V. Hinojales— from 2016 to 2019 owing to huge losses.

In a press release, TFM said “faced with mounting complaints about slave wages and non-remittance of their share of the profits, DAR’s National Agribusiness Venture Arrangements Evaluation Committee (NAEC) recommended on July 1, 2017 the revocation of the joint venture scheme with Cojuangco.”

TFM said NAEC told PARC that each CARP beneficiary who owned 2. 56 hectares of the ECJ haciendas only received a salary of P10,000 annually, or P833 monthly from the entire scheme, and miserably failed to reach the goals envisioned by DAR AO 2 of 1999. “Armed with the memo, the PARC executive committee in February 2018 recommended to then President Rodrigo Duterte to revoke the joint venture.”

In a statement released to the media, TFM said the farmers want Marcos to fulfill his promise to distribute all lands covered by CARP quickly and not wait for 2028 and noted that the DAR has not processed the distribution of land based on bureaucratic hurdles that the DAR and the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council (PARC) could have easily dismantled.

TFM said “for starters, he should distribute the Cojuangco haciendas to ARBs now and order Landbank to pay Hennessy Corp. to enable DAR to carve up the property and install the landless farmers.”

The farmers dramatized their protest with heart-shared red placards bearing their plea for Marcos not to fiddle with CARP and ARBs, warning that “the country could not achieve food sufficiency unless farmers are freed from the bondage of the soil.”

The TFM farmers urged Marcos to redeem his promise to distribute more than 500,000 hectares of PALs. “His pledge cannot be fulfilled unless all the Administrative Orders (AOs), memoranda circular (MCs) and instructions issued by DAR that hinder the quick distribution of private agricultural lands (PALs) are not scrapped.”

TFM noted that the DAR implement the provision of the RA 9700 which gives the qualified agrarian reform beneficiaries the right to use or cultivate the acquired land once it has been transferred in the name of the republic of the Philippines. “This is to address the many years of former landowners’ illegal use and cultivation of the acquired land under CARP despite the issuance of stop cultivation notices by the DAR,” TFM said.

Moreover, TFM asked Marcos to release the funds to enable Land Bank of the Philippines to process the payment to landlords and the takeover of PALs by legitimate ARBs. The federation of farmers organization also pleaded with Marcos to investigate in earnest the exclusion of hundreds of thousands of hectares of private agricultural land from CARP coverage and the continued low distribution and performance of DAR despite the availability of funds. (Photos by Jimmy A Domingo / Mata: Asia Press Photo)