Posts tagged with Noynoy Aquino

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February 2, 2010

Lakbayan 2010

Lakbayan Peasant Rally at Mendiola Lakbayan Peasant Rally at Mendiola Lakbayan Peasant Rally at Mendiola Lakbayan Peasant Rally at Mendiola Lakbayan Peasant Rally at Mendiola Lakbayan Peasant Rally at Mendiola

Why should Land Reform be a major election issue?

A huge part of our population still depends on agriculture for their livelihood. 75%, or three-fourths, in fact are farmers and farmworkers. And for every ten farmers, seven do not own the land they work on.

Farmers who do not have their own land have to work on the haciendas and estates of landlords, and corporate farms of foreign agribusinesses. As a consequence, they do not own the harvest even if they did all the labor. They do not even have a say on how the harvest should be divided and almost all the time, the division is unfair.

Many of our presidents have passed so-called land reform laws, the latest of which is Cory Aquino’s CARP (Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program). CARP was supposed to expire in 1998 but was extended. On the eve of CARP’s second expiration in 2008, peasant group KMP released a study which showed that from 1988 to 2008, the figure of 70% of peasants being landless did not change.

According to the KMP, the CARP contained many ‘loopholes’ which allowed landlords to either evade CARP or regain their lands from farmer-beneficiaries. One is the SDO (stock distribution option) of Hacienda Luisita notoriety. Instead of land, peasants are given shares of stock in the corporation owning the land. Land can always be planted with crops, meaning it is a steady source of income, or at least food. Stocks can only be exchanged for cash once, and most of the time, it has little or no value.

Another loophole is that the peasants have to pay for the land. This is unfair considering that in most cases, it is the sweat and blood of the peasants and their ancestors who made the land bloom in the first place. The decades of exploited labor by the farmers are more than enough payment for the land. Additionally, the landlords overvalue their land when it is being covered by CARP. The peasants have no say because only the landlord, DAR (Dept. of Agrarian Reform), and Land Bank get to determine the land value.

The KMP also criticized the CARPER (Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program Extension with Reforms) which is brainchild of Akbayan and its Representative, Risa Hontiveros-Baraquel. The CARPER did not change any of the loopholes. It only added more funds for the CARP. Coincidentally, many NGOs allied with Akbayan receive CARP funds.

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November 3, 2009

A collective struggle privatized: ‘Ang laban ni Ninoy at Cory’

I am reposting this excerpt from this blog post from Viewer Discretion with regard to the recent political music video advertisement of presidential aspirant Noynoy Aquino.

If there is anything stark about how election campaigns are shaping up, it is that there is a general agreement that the current Arroyo administration is so horrible, so corrupt, and indeed so dark (ang “paligid ay madilim”) that there is an urgent need for a way out. But decades of personality politics and the class-biased nature of our democracy and elections have and will still practically forbid the possibility of having any presidentiables from the middle/working class by mere virtue of the huge costs of an election campaign. The song “Hindi Ka Nag-Iisa” reflects this hopelessness—and more strikingly, the passivity of the bourgeoisie (“ang Pilipinas ay naghihintay, kami ay susunod”).

Of course, to deflect focus on this passivity, the song uses images of activism and rallies (“magkapit-bisig tayo”), which is strange because these are the very techniques that many petty/bourgeoisie deem “outdated” and “ineffective.” Apparently, the image of a mass demonstration (most notably used in Boni Ilagan’s historical documentary “Sa Liyab ng Libong Sulo,” definitely a more progressive and highly contextualized use of the sulo imagery, which you can watch online in six parts: 1 2 3 4 5 6) remains acknowledged as the most powerful tool in the collective struggle for social change—and while those in a comfortable social position are wont to avoid it like the plague, they are also quick to use it in pursuit of their own interests.