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Friday, March 18, 2005
Restraining order eyed on Polo Plantation ruling
By Edmund Sestoso
THE Provincial Office of the Department of Land Reform (DLR) and the so-called beneficiaries of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (Carp) on the 431-hectare Polo Plantation in Tanjay City plan to ask the Court of Appeals (CA) to reconsider its ruling nullifying the estate's Carp-coverage status.
Provincial Agrarian Reform Officer (Paro) Stephen Leonidas described the CA's February 19 decision "a big blow" to the government's implementation of agrarian reform.
Leonidas said despite the ruling, DLR and the "farmer-beneficiaries" maintained their position on the merits of their case and that what they had done was legal.
He said they would seek a motion for reconsideration from the CA and if the decision remained "unfavorable", they would go to the Supreme Court.
Meantime, a farm-based institution expressed disbelief and suspicion over the decision of the Appellate Court.
Eugene Quirante, liaison officer of the Philippine Peasant Institute (PPI) in Negros Oriental warned the ease with which CA gave weight to the authority of the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (Peza) and the local government unit's reclassification of an agricultural land could set a precedent for landowners to resort to a similar tactic.
"This case underscores the farmers' clamor for the DLR to uphold Memorandum Circular Number 6, which reinforces the Supreme Court ruling that regular courts should not handle agrarian related cases," Quirante said.
The PPI officer said landowners had taken to filing land reform cases before regular courts to oppose Carp.
Aside from nullifying DLR's putting Polo Plantation under Carp coverage, the CA also ordered the eviction of the 144 farmers who had received their Certificate of Land Ownership Awards (CLOA), the document that entitles agrarian reform beneficiaries to own the land they tilled.
"Worse, this does not augur well for other beneficiaries who have yet to be installed in their Carp-awarded landholdings," Quirante said.
The stripped farmers organized the Polo Plantation Agrarian Reform Multi-Purpose Cooperative (POPARMUCO) after DLR installed them into the awarded property on February 25 last year.
Despite alleged attempts by former plantation owner former Senator Rene Espina to stop the conversion, the farmers cultivated the DLR-awarded lands including planting a one-hectare portion with palay.
But plantation management, through its blue guards, allegedly took over the area and harvested the crop on the ground that the planted land was not included in CLOA.
Further attempts by DLR and the farmers to survey and segregate the Carp acquired lands failed.
(March 17, 2005 issue)
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