The Task Force Mapalad said in a press statement yesterday that Malacañang must explain why nothing was allocated to the Agrarian Reform Fund for 2007 to cover acquisition of landholdings for redistribution.

TFM said only P15.6 billion has been allocated for the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program in the proposed 2007 budget because, it claimed, the P28 billion of the P38 billion Marcos wealth intended for CARP had already been spent.

The group added that the Department of Agrarian Reform has been criticized for misusing the Marcos wealth released in 2004, and DAR supposedly failed to satisfactorily account for the budget. It said the beneficiaries of the zero ARF budget are the big landowners whose landholdings have not been touched, not only because they have put up stiff resistance against CARP but also because Congress has been slashing the budget for CARP.

TFM said it is not surprised as Congress is dominated by big landlord interest, represented by people like Rep. Ignacio Arroyo.

It claimed that Arroyo's stiff opposition to CARP led to the formation of the Concerned Landowners of Negros to resist the installation of farmer-beneficiaries in the contentious haciendas of Negros Occidental and to campaign for the scrapping of CARP, the group said in the statement.*

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