On May 2, Menelao “Ka-Melon” Barcia picked up his wife Maria from work at a gas station in Angeles City. At around 9 PM, two unidentified men on motorcycles drove alongside their jeepney and gunned them down.
Maria survived, only sustaining gunshots in her foot. Her husband was not so lucky.
He was shot four times—three in the chest and one at the back of his head. He was declared dead on arrival.
Ka-Melon was the leader of a group of Hacienda Dolores farmers who were organizing against the Leonardo Lachenal Leonio Holdings, Incorporated and the FL Property Management Corporation. The two companies are claiming ownership of the farmers’ ancestral domain.
The murder of Ka-Melon is the latest of several other unsolved extrajudicial killings and human rights violations connected to the fight for agrarian reform in the Philippines.
For decades now, farmers and indigenous people have been struggling to gain ownership of land through the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP). However, full implementation of the law has been hampered by landowners and major landholding businesses. Thus, the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program Extension with Reforms (Carper) Law was passed to give the government more time to distribute lands covered by CARP.
The situation remains bleak though.
Based on the Department of Agrarian Reform’s (DAR) own records, close to 800,000 hectares of land have not been given Certificates of Land Ownership Awards, the document under the Carper Law that entitles farmer-beneficiaries with land ownership.
206,000 hectares are yet to be issued Notices of Coverage (NOCs) as well. Without this, the land distribution process may not commence. Any land that has not been issued an NOC before the June 30 deadline will no longer be covered by the existing agrarian reform program.
Given these, some progressive groups have been calling for the government to scrap Carper altogether and instead replace it with the Genuine Agrarian Reform Bill (GARB). GARB seeks to implement “free land distribution” of all agricultural lands in the country, contrary to the Carper Law which obliges farmer-beneficiaries 30 annual amortization at 6% interest per annum.
The state of the current agrarian reform program is disheartening indeed. I am dissatisfied with DAR’s performance. I am frustrated at the prevalence of land grabbing in the country. I am upset that DAR acknowledged the likelihood of its failure to completely acquire and distribute qualified lands by the Carper Law’s expiration date.
Will a new agrarian reform program solve these? Perhaps not. Twenty-six years have passed and CARP and its amendment are still nowhere to be fulfilled. If we start all over again, justice may never come to Ka-Melon and to the other Filipino farmers.
I do agree with DAR’s appeal, however, for the government to pass a law that will allow the agency to continue issuing NOCs even after the deadline. With an NOC, the distribution process for a piece of land will still continue even after June 30. This seems more promising.
By the time this column is published, there will be less than 15 days left until the deadline for the Carper Law. To President Benigno Aquino III and to DAR: We are watching. We are praying. We are hoping.
