THERE was a report in this daily the other day that said President Arroyo wants to condone agrarian reform amortizations that have remained unpaid through the years.
It should be noted that the agrarian reform program has been the centerpiece of many a president’s administration since the need to overcome our people’s poverty has emerged as a great political issue right after the end of World War II.
Now that the election fever has subsided, it is time for newly elected public officials to seriously turn to the much-discussed and talked about agrarian reform program.
Rebellious mood
The matter of changing the country’s land ownership structure became a serious political concern before the 1930s and was placed in suspended animation during the war years.
With most of the arable lands producing the country’s cereal needs under the control of the then estimated mere 15 percent of Filipinos, there broke out serious agrarian trouble, like the one involving the Sakdalistas.
Since majority of the Filipinos were tilling lands they did not own, and with the sharing of harvests pegged at 50-50 with part of the cost of production shouldered by the tillers, it was understandable why the farmers were in a rebellious mood, and why the rise of communism became a reality in the ‘50s and ‘60s.
But it was not until the ‘70s when agrarian reform was truly initiated.
Centerpiece program
In 1972, then president Ferdinand Marcos made land reform the focus of martial law.
It sought to dismantle the republic’s land ownership structure and decreed the breaking up of large landed estates and their re-distribution to the so-called landless.
It belittled communism’s propaganda value, and paved the way for its demise.
Failure
But while the Marcos administration’s land reform ploy succeeded to calm down agrarian unrest, it failed to break down people’ poverty.
The agrarian reform program hobbled in its implementation up to this day, due largely to a failure to foresee the loopholes in it.
Many of the beneficiaries had always been dependent on the landowners for their production capital needs.
And when they were awarded ownership of the land they tilled, there was no financial component with the program.
The new setup forced them to fall victims of merciless loan sharks.
And not only were they not able to pay the monthly amortization, but many had to give up the land eventually.
