Thursday, April 03, 2008 Editorial: Sumilao farmers' lasting legacy
THE impact of the legacy the Sumilao farmers has imparted on this generation will remain an undying lesson that will surely last in the annals of Philippine agrarian history.
When the farmers left their farming town in Bukidnon last year to embark on a walk that would later be hailed as a giant step to victory, everybody seemed skeptic. Some people had misgivings-even the local media was not at all enthusiastic on their coverage. A daily slide to sameness brand of reportage-instead of a full-blown, provocative and intelligent journalistic pieces-lamentably fell short of what is today one of the biggest success stories in agrarian struggle.
All these doubts, however, are within the bounds of reason. For the farmers to leave their land in a battle to regain it was a paradox of a colossal magnitude, to start with. All odds are stacked against them -- from the setbacks dealt by the Supreme Court (SC) to the seemingly never-ending bureaucratic rigmarole in the Executive Branch.
From all angles, the 144 hectare contested property looked like as if it were covered with a steel layer, hardened by the series of injustices committed against the farmers.
But the Sumilao farmers never wavered. The Walk for Sumilao Land, Walk for Justice Campaign demonstrate the farmers' indomitable spirit; their impregnable faith that not even the fiercest trials can assail.
One important lesson of that fateful journey reverberates to all the impoverished rural farmlands in the country: that change can happen; that justice can be served in a peaceful campaign.
But the struggle is not yet over for other farmers in the countryside, who are still today denied of their land. A law has yet to be passed to infuse fresh funding that will ensure the continuation of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP). Congress should not only provide money, it should plug the loopholes of the current agrarian reform program to spare others of the untold sufferings that Sumilao farmers were once harshly subjected to,
