Saturday, May 05, 2007 Acofo: Alliance for rural concerns By Julio Acofo Seeing With New Eyes
ALMOST 20 years from Edsa 1 where it drew its inspiration as a social justice program to democratize ownership and control of lands (e.g. land to the tiller), the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program "emerges" as a party-list.
Alliance for Rural Concerns or ARC is an accredited party-list. As a party-list, the Alliance for Rural Concerns shall, if elected, work for policies to sustain the gains of the CARP beyond 2008. It shall work for the extension of the CARP beyond 2008.
ARC can also refer to agrarian reform community (arc), which is the area-based and clientele -- specific CARP strategy to develop communities where the CARP is implemented.
Area-based, because an arc "is a barangay or a cluster of barangays" where CARP is implemented. Clientele-specific because the arc is where farmers-beneficiaries of the CARP are located.
Billions of pesos worth of physical infrastructure: farm-to- market roads, bridges, irrigation and potable water systems, training and technology transfer, marketing and product development, cooperative development programs were invested in more than 2,000 arcs since 1993. Barely five years after, a study by the Institute of Agrarian Studies in 1998 showed that the household incomes in arcs increased by six percent. It proved that the arcs became and are indeed growth points in the countryside. It's the reason why the DAR is working to expand and connect the arcs to spread and sustain this proven economic growth gain. To date, some P2 billion were invested in the 63 arcs in Cordillera.
According to DAR Regional Director Renato Navata, "of the almost P2 billion investment, P1.03 billion were invested in physical infrastructure". Or an average of P52 million per year" worth of roads, bridges and irrigation projects. This figure is what Cordillera is set to lose with the CARP not being extended beyond 2008.
It has always been held as a personal value that the ultimate product of any development program is people, in the case of CARP it's the agrarian reform beneficiaries (arbs) and their communities (farmers, cooperatives, leaders, landowners, local governments) including DAR personnel and the entire DAR bureaucracy.
To reposition the agrarian reform beneficiaries and their communities to a voice in Congress is to move the farmer-agrarian reform beneficiary from a beneficiary to a program crafter and policy maker; from a recipient of CARP projects to an advocate and designer of national policies for his/her community. The Alliance of Rural Concerns as a party-list literally brings the more than 2000 agrarian reform communities and their partners in to Congress. Agrarian reform after almost 20 years through the ARC party-list will have a "face" in Congress.
Through the ARC party-list, the arc as a model of community development will have the chance to be marketed in Congress as a tested sample of how to develop communities with local and international investments. Agrarian reform funds or the money from the proceeds of ill-gotten wealth was also used to bring in more international aid (grants and loans) to fund the projects in the arcs.
Tested advocates of agrarian reform and rural development banner the ARC party-list. Most of them are leaders of civil society organizations and tireless advocates of agrarian reform in their official and personal capacities. They include among others Gerry Bulatao, Frank Roy Ribo, Oca Francisco and Ed de la Torre. Bulatao is a former undersecretary of the DAR and dela Torre headed the Technical Education and Skills and Development Authority. The DAR and Tesda can attest to their passion and initiatives for very grounded programs and projects.
What does the ARC party-list have to offer for the indigenous peoples like those of us in Cordillera? Amidst the call for and efforts to integrate the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act (Ipra) with the CARP and other natural resource management laws like the Mining Act of 1995, the ARC party-list in its pamphlet says: "we are committed to push for fairer, faster and more meaningful agrarian and aquatic resources as well as respect for ancestral domains. Support the efforts of IPs to secure and develop their ancestral domain".
The ARC aims advocate for "(the) harmonization of the rights of indigenous peoples and the agrarian reform beneficiaries under the conflicting provisions of the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act and oppose large scale mining harmful to the environment and violative of IPs and LGUs".
As to the DAR, the ARC says: "We value CARP despite its acknowledged defects, and look to the DAR as a principled partner in the struggle of the rural people for reforms and better life."
Such bold yet humble statements coming from people who have helped shepherd the CARP as a profession and more a vocation.
To one who readily trusts in the goodness of people, these statements reflect a deep concern for social justice, which is the foundation philosophy of CARP. Even as CARP is being marketed more as an economic program and strategy with measured and proven success. Social justice looms larger than economics. There are a lot of things that are more meaningful than economics and its numbers. The advocates of the IpraA that I met are tested workers for social justice. There is the blend! (This is not a campaign material. It is a personal view of the CARP as it evolves from a social justice program that created agrarian reform communities (arcs) to a political force (party-list) led by civil society-based leaders.)
