The Bagong Alyansang Makabayan-Negros yesterday said in a press statement that it is pessimistic about the impact of the 5-year extension of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program on the dismantling of the land monopoly and in ending widespread poverty and hunger in the countryside.

Bayan Negros Secretary Felipe Levy Gelle Jr. said in the press statement that extending the timetable and pouring of billions of funds for a failed land reform program, without eliminating its inherent weakness, the CARP extension is bound to fail again.

The House Committee on Agrarian Reform Wednesday approved a consolidated bill extending CARP for another five years, but Negros solons said further deliberations will have to be conducted before it becomes final.

The consolidated bill provides a P100 billion to fund the program for the next five years.

The CARP expires on June 10, 2008.

Gelle also said CARP itself is full of legal loopholes that were used by big landlords to evade land reform and dupe the landless peasants and farmers.

He said that after 34 years of land reform, since the PD 27 of Marcos, the government land reform has failed to dismantle the monopoly of lands as the economic elite of Negros such as the Ledesmas, Montillas, Zaycos, and other big landlords still hold the vast sugar haciendas.

Gelle also claimed that Eduardo Cojuangco still lords it over the 11 haciendas he allegedly sold to farmworkers at P1 per hectare under the Corporative scheme in 1999.

Gelle said the current CARP extension runs counter to the spirit of genuine land reform they have been pushing and does not deserve the support of the peasantry.*

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