occasional paper 12

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Occasional Paper No. 12

April 1999

by Jennifer C. Franco, Ph.D.

BETWEEN UNCRITICAL COLLABORATIONAND OUTRIGHT OPPOSITION :

ANEVALUATIVEREPORTONTHE

PARTNERSHIP FORAGRARIAN REFORMAND RURAL

DEVELOPMENTSERVICES (PARRDS)

ANDTHESTRUGGLEFORAGRARIANREFORM

ANDRURALDEVELOPMENT INTHE1960S

INSTITUTE FORPOPULARD E M O C R A C Y

WORKPROGRESS

N


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INSTITUTE FOR POPULAR DEMOCRACY 1

WORK IN PROGRESS

Between Uncritical Collaboration and Outright Opposition

By Jennifer C. Franco, Ph.D.

Between Uncritical Collaboration and Outright Opposition:An Evaluative Report on the Partnership for Agrarian Reform and RuralDevelopment Services (PARRDS) and the Strugglefor Agrarian Reform

and Rural Development in the 1960s*

WORK IN PROGRESS

Introduction: Historical Context and

Background

Despite numerous pieces of legislation on agrar-

ian reform in this century, the Philippines still had

a highly inequitable distribution of land owner-ship going into the 1990s. As late as 1988, ac-

cording to government land registration records,

not more than five percent of all landowners owned

83 percent of the countrys total farmlands. This

inequitable distribution, the highest rate in Asia,

persisted mainly because of the failure of govern-

ment agrarian reform programs in the past to deal

with the underlying problem of widespread land-

lessness and near-landlessness. Past government

programs emphasized resettlement, rather than

actual redistribution, while the central government

usually responded with repression and mere

promises to pressures from below for reform. Past

government failures to implement land reform

effectively and democratically one of the basic

building blocks for rural democratization and ru-

ral development - meant that toward the 1990s

achievement of full and meaningful agrarian re-

form remained a central concern for many poor

peasant communities, farm workers and pro-re-

form support groups.

Looking back at the past decade, one finds that

agrarian reform in the Philippines had arrived at a

new political impasse with the passage in June

1988 of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform

Law (CARL) and its related program, the Com-

prehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP).

This impasse was initially characterized by very

weak political support for the redistributive as-

pect of the program, both in society and within

the state. On the side of the state, the first leader-

ship under CARP at the Department of Agrarian

Reform (DAR) was eventually implicated in sev-eral land scandals, while the third DAR appoin-

tee, a pro-reform advocate, was blocked from tak-

ing office by anti-reformists in Congress. At the

same time, red scare tactics set limits on the

maneuverability of the pro-reformists initially

within the DAR bureaucracy, many of whom

were eventually eased out of the department. On

the society side, the most active groups on the

agrarian reform scene who had tried to influence

the Congressional debate on the content of the

program, ended up rejecting the law that waseventually passed as irrevocably pro-landlord.

After that, at least initially, there was little room

on the broad left of the political spectrum for se-

rious consideration of the CARPs redistributive

potentials, mainly because of the perceived need

to project other, presumably more pro-peasant

programs (PARCODE or agrarian revolution) in-

stead.

Then the early 1990s brought about a series ofevents that altered the political dynamics around

agrarian reform, setting the stage for the emer-

gence of the Philippine Partnership for Agrarian

Reform and Rural Development Services

(PARRDS), in March 1994. 1 The first event was

the coming to power of the Ramos administra-

tion in 1992. Under Ramos, the national govern-


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WORK IN PROGRESS

INSTITUTE FOR POPULAR DEMOCRACY2


ment began to make a clearer push toward

neoliberalism, as seen in its neoliberal-inspired

Philippines 2000 program. But the Ramos presi-dency also made some surprising moves, particu-

larly with regard to agrarian reform. One of

Ramoss campaign promises, directed at anti-re-

formists, had been that he would raise the reten-

tion limit within CARP from five to 50 hectares.

But the new President quickly brought in Ernesto

Garilao, former executive director of the Philip-

pine Business for Social Progress (PBSP), to head

the DAR. In turn, Garilao was able to convince

Ramos to drop his promise of raising the reten-

tion limit under CARP. This move, the earliestindication that the new DAR secretary intended

to defend the integrity of CARP as constituted,

immediately set him apart from his predecessors.

But Garilao did not stop there:

In addition, [he] brought several respected NGO

activists into the DAR and gave them key posi-

tions, and then proceeded to launch a clean-up

operation inside the bureaucracy. His other major

step was to informal consultations immediately

with members of the NGO community, to the

surprise of many. He later instituted both formal

and informal consultative groups involving vari-

ous autonomous peasant organizations and

NGOs. 2

Ramoss election thus created a more complex po-

litical challenge for groups on the left of the broad

political spectrum concerned with agrarian reform

and rural development (ARRD) issues. This chal-

lenge was rooted in the relatively greater atten-tion paid by the Ramos administration to the po-

litical legitimacy functions of the central state,

compared to previous administrations. 3 Concern

for political legitimacy, whatever the actual inten-

tions behind it, ended up increasing the political

space available for CARP implementation than

had previously existed, creating new opportuni-

ties for ARRD advocates willing to engage gov-

ernment.

At the same time, Ramoss election had a power-

ful disorganizing effect on civil society as or-

ganized groups on the broad left struggled to

come to terms with how to position themselves

vis--vis the new administration. In particular,

Ramoss election heightened the historical divi-

sion within the broad left between social demo-

crats (SDs) and national democrats (NDs), as their

two diametrically opposed political poles gained

prominence. The social democratic network of

organizations took the lead in occupying what hasbeen dubbed the uncritical collaboration pole,

while the national democratic network assumed

leadership of the outright opposition pole. Signs

of the impending rift within the broad left had

emerged as early as the 1992 campaign, when the

Congress for a Peoples Agrarian Reform (CPAR)

was unable to unite behind a single presidential

candidate. While part of CPARs membership

went with the Ramos campaign despite the

candidates promise to raise the retention limit un-

der CARP, another part went with Jovito Salonga.

After the election, deep disagreement within the

CPAR over how to view the new administration

plagued the coalition, and the inability to move

past this internal political impasse among other

problems, helped to precipitate the collapse of the

coalition in late 1993.

The second event therefore that set the stage for

the emergence of PARRDS was the collapse of

the CPAR. The CPAR had previously gainedprominence as the longest-running coalition in the

post-Marcos period, but it is probably no coinci-

dence that the countrys model coalition had

risen from the peasant and peasant-support sec-

tor. A confluence of events had worked to put

agrarian reform at the top of the national agenda

during Corazon Aquinos first 18 months in of-


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WORK IN PROGRESS


fice. The collapse of the Marcos dictatorship in

1986 had raised expectations that a new agrarian

reform law would be enacted by the peoplepower administration. But government foot-

dragging, combined with landlord resistance dur-

ing the early part of the Aquino administration,

meant that enactment of a pro-peasant agrarian

reform law would be neither automatic nor nec-

essarily democratic. The Mendiola massacre had

helped to drive this point home more broadly. This

realization eventually led to the birth of the CPAR

on May 31, 1987. Though too late to play a role

in expanding the number of pro-reform represen-

tatives in the national legislature, the CPAR soonbecame the main advocacy vehicle for proponents

of significant reform to influence the land reform

debate in the first post-Marcos Congress. Along

with the independent efforts of some member or-

ganizations, the CPAR went on to play a key role

in keeping agrarian reform on the national agenda

and in proposing an alternative pro-peasant pro-

gram, the PARCODE. Its efforts contributed to

the eventual passage of CARL and the inaugura-

tion of CARP, even though CPAR itself rejected

them as anti-peasant.

But the CPAR proved unable to effectively me-

diate the differences in political strategy vis--vis

the Ramos administration that existed between its

different member organizations. Though the de-

mise of the CPAR had been under way for some

time, its collapse still created a hole in the ARRD

political landscape. Most of the groups that later

came together as PARRDS had also been part of

the CPAR. In explaining the new organizationsorigins, the PARRDS literature suggests that the

collapse of the CPAR created a vacuum mainly

in terms of national agrarian reform advocacy. But

it also closed down formal venues and channels

previously used by different organizations within

the coalition to relate with each other. Like any

other organization, the CPAR had served a dual

function as an actor in the larger political arena

and as an institutional context within which other

(smaller) organizational actors interacted, engaged,fought each other, and got to know each other

better. Both dimensions of the CPAR evaporated

when the coalition closed down. As a result, two

kinds of gaps were left on the ARRD political

landscape: one in terms of key national AR advo-

cacy actors, the other in terms of a stable, predict-

able institutional context within which individual

AR organizational actors could formally relate

with each other.

The third and final event that altered the ARRDpolitical-institutional context and gave a push to

the emergence of PARRDS was the split in 1993

within the Communist Party of the Philippines -

New Peoples ArmyNational Democratic Front

(CPP-NPA-NDF) and its constellation of above-

ground organizational forces. The factors and

dynamics surrounding the breakup of the national

democratic movement are certainly beyond the

scope of this report. But it can be said that the

1993 split gave a push to, or at least helped to

create, positive conditions for the formation of

PARRDS in at least two ways. First, it unleashed

ARRD forces that had already begun to question

the party leaderships outright rejection policy

vis--vis the Philippine government, at least in

terms of agrarian reform, but until then had been

constrained in their political actions and relation-

ships by the CPP leadership, structures and rules,

and internal dynamics. The split unleashed these

political forces and made them free agents, so

to speak, available for new endeavors such asPARRDS. Second, the CPP split in 1993 also

opened up new political space for, and increased

the political currency of, other non-CPP-related

groups also interested in pursuing a more sophis-

ticated approach to CARP than the leadership of

either of the two prevailing main political move-

ments could offer.


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WORK IN PROGRESS



Birth of a New ARRD Political Strategy

While the inauguration of the Ramos administra-tion introduced a more complex political challenge

to ARRD advocacy, the collapse of the CPAR

and the CPP split showed the need for new politi-

cal strategies and organizational approaches to deal

with this challenge. Proponents of the PARRDS

project thus viewed it as one that would take up

the challenge of steering the difficult, unplowed

course between the two main contending politi-

cal poles vis-a-vis the Ramos administration. These

were characterized as uncritical collaboration

on the one hand and outright opposition on theother. The PARRDS convenors aimed for a more

careful reading of the Ramos project, which they

viewed as neither the key to economic salvation

nor a mere propaganda ploy (PARRDS Strat-

egy and Program for ARRD, July 1994). As one

convenor put it, PARRDS cannot be reduced to

collaboration/support to the Ramos government

nor into all-out opposition to it. PARRDS will

develop an independent yet critical stance towards

government and at the same time maximize pos-

sibilities, including principled partnership with

reform elements in government (Board Meeting

Minutes, March 30, 1994). This new kind of po-

sitioning was most clearly articulated vis-a-vis

CARP. PARRDS will try to balance between a

critique of CARP [on the one hand], while maxi-

mizing possibilities within this legal framework

on the other (ibid.). This potentially tricky bal-

ancing act in turn required a multifaceted ap-

proach combining debate, dialogue and nego-

tiation, with creating.

To the PARRDS convenors, debate meant cri-

tiquing the flaws in the government development

framework and even coming out with a compre-

hensive critique of the Ramos program based on

a thorough study of the latter. Dialogue meant

engaging key government offices and personnel

in activities that could reformulate governments

development agenda to expand its social reform

agenda and opening lines with policy research-

ers and planners of government and influencingthe direction of their work through constant inter-

action. Negotiation meant working for conces-

sions from government which could advance the

development project of the popular movement,

using both pressure politics and moral persua-

sion on government officials tasked with imple-

menting Ramoss programs. Finally, the

convenors of PARRDS emphasized the need to

create as well. This meant going beyond both criti-

cism and proposition, toward actually demon-

strating the desirability and viability of the devel-opment framework of the popular movement

through community-based initiatives. This last

approach also implied local coalition-building

since it was felt that [t]he popular movement

needs to find ways to pool resources to demon-

strate its frameworks superiority at a scale which

will have an impact on the national development

debate.

Armed with this new combined approach,

PARRDS set out to establish itself as the main

anchor within civil society of a new, alternative

pluralist position on agrarian reform (AR) and

rural development (RD) concerns. As a new coa-

lition initiative, PARRDS viewed itself as distinct

from its precursor, the CPAR in four basic ways,

each of which was reformulated as one element

of the organizations overall work program. First,

the PARRDS convenors emphasized the need for

a progressive pole capable of taking on both

AR and RD concerns, though it is not clear fromthe PARRDS literature exactly why integrating

the twin targets of agrarian reform and rural de-

velopment was considered important. What the

literature does make clear is that in the Philippines

historically, most NGOs and POs engaged in

agrarian reform failed to address rural develop-

ment, while those engaged in rural development

tended to downplay land tenure improvement


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WORK IN PROGRESS


(LTI) and other AR issues (Board Meeting Min-

utes, March 30, 1994). With its strong emphasis

on AR concerns, the CPAR was viewed as hav-ing failed to give adequate attention to RD con-

cerns (ibid.). Whatever the exact reasoning be-

hind it, integration of AR and RD work was put

forward as a major element of the new coalitions

work program, and key issues/indicators for

each of the two dimensions were identified. For

AR, key issues/indicators were identified as land

tenure improvement (LTI), land conversion/land

use and agricultural monopolies, while those iden-

tified for RD were increased production/income,

chemical/capital intensity and integrated area de-velopment.

Second, in contrast to the CPAR experience,

PARRDS aimed to cultivate synergy between

peasant organizations or POs, NGOs and politi-

cal blocs. The CPAR had been founded as a coa-

lition of national peasant federations, supported

by NGO partners. The national PO federation

leaders had been envisioned to play the decisive

role in the coalitions internal decision-making

processes, but in reality NGO and political bloc

representatives usually made their presence keenly

felt in the day-to-day activities and overall direc-

tion of the coalition. This situation eventually be-

came a source of tension between different groups

within the CPAR. In contrast, NGOs and politi-

cal blocs would be admitted and officially recog-

nized as part of the PARRDS initiative, along-

side the POs. It was felt that institutionalizing the

presence and participation of the NGOs and po-

litical blocs would make their actual participationin the day-to-day activities and in shaping the

coalitions overall direction more transparent than

it had been with the CPAR. Partly to make par-

ticipation by the different types of member-com-

ponents more transparent, PARRDS convenors

decided to institutionalize separate caucuses for

Third, PARRDS was conceived as a coalition

working on two complementary levels national

and provincial. The CPAR had started out as anadvocacy coalition working at the national level,

and only later tried to evolve regional (interpro-

vincial) coalitions, with mixed results. The

PARRDS convernors believed that national ad-

vocacy should always be linked to a strong local

base, especially with regard to AR. Giving birth

to grassroots-level cooperation is one indicator that

a national-level coalition effort is successful. An

issue like AR will be fought not only in the halls

of Congress and Malacanang and the streets of

the metropolis, but also in the far-flung towns andvillages where landlessness is a lived experience.

With PARRDS, the focus of coalition-base-build-

ing was shifted from the regional to the provin-

cial level, partly because of the nature of AR imple-

mentation dynamics under Secretary Ernesto

Garilaos DAR in early 1994. Strong peasant

coalitions in the provinces are even more impor-

tant now that the DAR has announced that it will

distribute 600,000 hectares of land this year. Prov-

ince-level peasant coalitions can help ensure that

the DAR does not waver in its commitment, and

will continue to challenge the government to ex-

pand its AR program (ibid.). It seems that the

PARRDS convenors also felt that it was at the

provincial rather than the regional level that inter-

organizational cooperation was more natural and

more strategic in terms of potential rural develop-

ment alternatives taking root.

Fourth, unlike the CPAR, PARRDS would pro-

vide support services such as community organi-zation (CO) training, grassroots leadership forma-

tion and popular education to its local coalition

members, as part of the provincial coalitions base-

building agenda. An analysis of the CPAR expe-

rience had prompted the PARRDS convenors to

conceive the partnership as both an ARRD advo-

representatives of POs, NGOs and political blocs. cacy coalition and a support services center:


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WORK IN PROGRESS



One of the challenges facing PARRDS is the

need to strengthen its member-organizations be-

cause a strong membership base would also meana stronger coalition. A big stumbling block to

unity, as experienced by the CPAR, was a widely

noted quantitative and qualitative unevenness of

its member-organizations. Smaller federations, per-

haps in fear of getting drowned by much bigger

federations, tended to act too cautiously which

affected timely and prompt decision-making in the

coalition. On the other hand, big federations felt

that the smaller and oftentimes weaker federations

get most of the benefits of a united front effort.

PARRDS is aware that promoting the mutualgrowth of all its member-organizations will re-

dound to strong unity. One of the ways to do this

is to provide support to the respective community

organizing and training programs of its member-

organizations(ibid).

But rather than creating a coalition center or na-

tional secretariat that would provide such services,

PARRDS recognized and took seriously the train-

ing and education resources already available to

the coalition through the different member-orga-

nizations themselves, thus giving birth to the

counterparting system concept.

Finally, an additional insight from the CPAR ex-

perience in terms of organizational strategy influ-

enced the PARRDS convenors in the making of

the organizational design. One important lesson

was that mechanisms would have to be developed

to prevent the national secretariat from becoming

too powerful vis--vis the coalition itself. Thoughnecessary for any advocacy organization operat-

ing both at and beyond the national political cen-

ter, national secretariats tend to take off from

their base in the absence of organizational holds

on it. This is because national secretariats handle

the day-to-day operations, including communica-

tions between the coalition and other state and

societal actors, and often among different mem-

ber organizations as well. Secretariats often also

provide a stable public face and most visibleproof of a coalitions continuity over time. In the

absence of effective checks and balances, the coa-

lition and its member organizations, can end up

becoming unwitting hostages to decisions or ac-

tions made by national secretariats on their be-

half, especially when their operations are based

in local areas outside the national capital.

The PARRDS literature suggests that the CPAR

national secretariat had become detached from the

coalition and acquired too much decision makingpower relative to the coalition leaders, mainly be-

cause of its sheer weight in terms of number of

staff members. To avoid this problem, it was de-

cided that PARRDS would maintain a relatively

trimmed down national secretariat, and that one

way to do this would be to spread decision mak-

ing and other responsibilities to other areas of the

coalition. The most explicit effort to prevent the

national secretariat from becoming too big was

through the counterparting system. Here the sec-

retariat would merely facilitate or boost deliv-

ery of training and education services by one

member organization to another within the con-

text of the coalition, though the PARRDS litera-

ture does not clearly spell out how this would

happen. Meanwhile, other organizational struc-

tures were created which in theory could also serve

to keep the national secretariat in check, includ-

ing regular monthly board meetings and separate

NGO, PO and political bloc caucuses.

In sum, PARRDS was established as a vehicle

for plowing the difficult course between the two

main contending political poles vis-a-vis the

Ramos administration on agrarian reform and ru-

ral development. Meeting this challenge required

a multifaceted approach that could effectively

combine national debate, dialogue and negotia-


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WORK IN PROGRESS


tion around agrarian reform, with creating alter-

native rural development building blocks on the

ground. It also required a new coalition effort thatwould build on the gains made by the CPAR, but

also move beyond these by learning from its weak-

nesses.

PARRDS thus viewed itself as building on but

going beyond the CPAR in four basic ways. First,

it would engage in struggles for both full and

meaningful agrarian reform and sustainable and

equitable rural development by integrating both

kinds of targets into its work program. Second, it

would try to cultivate synergy around AR andRD issues between its different PO, NGO and

political bloc member organizations. Third, it

would work on both the national and the provin-

cial levels, since the actual struggle for AR and

RD takes place both in the national capital and on

the ground in local areas. Fourth, it would facili-

tate provision of support services, such as CO

training, grassroots leadership formation and

popular education to local coalition members, as

part of its provincial coalition base-building

agenda.

PARRDS would be both a coalition and a ser-

vice center. Its programs would focus on accom-

plishing specific agrarian reform and rural devel-

opment targets, and its main political strategy

would be to combine provincial coalition-build-

ing with national advocacy, negotiation and rep-

resentation. In support of this strategy, it would

provide CO training, grassroots leadership forma-

tion and popular education services to area-basedPOs and NGOs. Finally, while accomplishing all

this, PARRDS would maintain a small national

secretariat staff by spreading decision making and

other responsibilities to other areas of the coali-

tion structure. It would do this through the

counterparting system, institutionalized PO, NGO

and political bloc caucuses, and the maintenance

of a working board at the national level. This then

is how the PARRDS convenors conceived of

their ARRD project at the time of its founding.

How well has the PARRDS project worked over

the past four years (1994-present)? Based on our

present understanding of the ARRD challenges

to come, what changes, if any, should be made in

terms of its overall political strategy, programmatic

focus, or organizational structure? Before attempt-

ing to address these questions, it may be useful to

review briefly PARRDS activities over the past

four years. The next section of this report will pro-

vide an overview of PARRDS activities, includ-ing activities related to the maintenance of the

coalition itself. The discussion does not intend to

give an exhaustive account of PARRDS activi-

ties, since such information is available elsewhere.

Rather, the overview will provide the main his-

torical and political-institutional reference points

for the synthesis that follows of views expressed

by key informants during the primary data-gath-

ering phase of the evaluation.

Overview of PARRDS Activities,

1994-1997

1994: Breaking New Ground

PARRDS introduced itself publicly with the

Alyansang Magdiwang mobilization of 10,000

peasants at the DAR central office in Manila on

June 10, 1994, the sixth anniversary of CARP

and a day traditionally meant to heighten publicawareness of ongoing AR struggles. Similar mo-

bilizations were carried out in several provinces

outside the national capital, including Davao del

Norte, South Cotabato and Cebu. A PO leaders

forum was held as well. Focusing on six years of

CARP implementation, the forum helped give


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WORK IN PROGRESS



public projection to PARRDS and its new politi-

cal strategy vis--vis agrarian reform.

As the opening salvo of PARRDS, the June 10

mobilization was expected to accomplish several

things. It not only signaled the new coalitions ar-

rival on the ARRD scene, but also provided an

occasion to test its new political strategy of com-

bining criticism with maximization of opportu-

nities, using social pressure from below and

engagement with openings from above created

by state reformists. The DAR responded by act-

ing favorably on most of the specific AR cases

raised by the PARRDS forces. The coordinatedmobilizations both at the national political center

and in far-flung provinces also helped to lay the

groundwork for the launching of provincial coa-

lition initiatives in seven provinces (Bulacan,

Nueva Ecija, Pampanga, Cavite, Cebu, South

Cotabato and Davao del Norte). By the last quar-

ter of 1994, PARRDS provincial coalition-build-

ing initiatives were formalized, meaning lead

NGOs were identified and the first set of provin-

cial coalition-builders were deployed.

As part of its focus on rural development in gen-

eral and on food security issues in particular,

PARRDS also became a convenor of the World

Food Day Committee, a broad coalition formed

in mid-1994 to prepare activities around World

Food Day on October 16. The campaign culmi-

nated in a Rural Development Exposition and

Trade Fair (RDETF), a GATT (General Agree-

ment on Tariffs and Trade) discussion and work-

shop, and a dialogue with key government agen-cies (DAR and DA) where PO leaders were able

to engage government to respond to them on is-

sues and concerns confronting their organizations.

The effort was considered by PARRDS national

leaders to have been a relative success despite

weak media work, the limited participation of

PARRDS member organizations, and a low level

of preparedness for the dialogue with the DA. The

activity elicited positive coverage in the media and

enabled PARRDS to reach out to other groupsand institutions beyond the coalition. It also al-

lowed PARRDS to further develop discussions

about and highlight small-scale initiatives toward

viable rural development alternatives.

The World Food Day 1994 campaign was espe-

cially significant given an intensifying trend to-

ward trade globalization at that time under the

governments Medium-Term Philippine Develop-

ment Plan (MTADP) and GATT, which was then

up for ratification in the Philippine Senate.PARRDS became an active part of the broader

anti-GATT coalition, PabiGATT, which had been

formed to lobby against the passage of GATT.

1995: Setting New Terms of Engagement

By the beginning of 1995, anti-reformist initia-

tives to dilute CARP further were gaining ground

in Congress. In particular, bills were being con-

sidered proposing the exemption of fishponds,

prawn farms and commercial farms from agrar-

ian reform under CARP. These bills, if approved,

would remove a significant portion of private ag-

ricultural lands from CARP coverage. In response

to this anti-reform onslaught, PARRDS put to-

gether a broad ARRD front to spearhead civil

society opposition to the bill and to other such

dilution schemes under way in Congress.

Specifically, PARRDS was instrumental in the

formation on January 19, 1995 of the Movementto Oppose and Resist Exemptions from Agrarian

Reform (MORE-AR), which launched an inten-

sive and extensive month-long campaign. The

MORE-AR campaign was marked by sustained

media work, where the pro-reform position on

exemptions was highlighted through a series of

press releases, press conferences and radio-hop-


10/33


WORK IN PROGRESS


ping. The MORE-AR coalition spearheaded

other forms of social mobilization throughout the

campaign, including lobbying in Congress, dia-logues and negotiation with key Cabinet mem-

bers, and picketing at Malacaang and the Sen-

ate. In the end, the proposal to exempt commer-

cial farms was dropped from a consolidated ver-

sion of the bills, while some small but significant

modifications were made to the original propos-

als. Such concessions would likely not have oc-

curred without the pressure exerted on govern-

ment officials by the MORE-AR campaign.

Another major activity initiated by PARRDS in1995 was the Philippine Campaign for Agrarian

Reform and Rural Development (PhilCARRD)

waged nationwide from June to October that year.

The formal launching of PhilCARRD on June 6

was marked by a two-day national consultation.

Two hundred ARRD advocates representing 80

organizations came from 30 provinces. PARRDS

served as secretariat for the activity.

The consultation helped to invigorate the CARP

implementation process by a careful elaboration

of PARRDS alternative analysis and political

strategy vis--vis CARP. It was a contextualization

process that went beyond the automatic suc-

cesses picture painted by the government and its

uncritical supporters on the one hand, and the

inevitable failures scenario projected by critics

of CARP on the other. The effort to look at what

more could have been achieved given the situa-

tion, and what was impossible to achieve because

of the situation was a major breakthrough inARRD advocacy. It finally opened up discussion

of the difficult how to questions related to

CARP implementation from a progressive per-

spective. The PhilCARRD was all the more sig-

nificant since it brought together ARRD advo-

cates from both society and the state, with the so-

cietal advocates asserting their right to full and

meaningful participation in the program imple-

mentation process, and the DAR officials being

held accountable for the way implementation wasproceeding. In recognition of the impending

deadline of CARP (then still believed to be

1998), the 1995 PhilCARRD inaugurated a fast-

track implementation campaign targeting redis-

tribution of two million hectares of land and for-

mation of 2000 agrarian reform communities

(ARCs) by 1998.

As part of this fast-track campaign, the

PhilCARRD consultation also mandated the hold-

ing of PO-NGO-GO consultations at the provin-cial level (Provincial Consultations on Agrarian

Reform and Rural Development or

ProCARRDs) to address the specific problems

of CARP implementation on the ground in 30

provinces. As a result, PARRDS worked with

other NGOs to initiate ProCARRDS in a number

of provinces, including four where PARRDS pro-

vincial coalition-builders had been deployed the

previous year (Nueva Ecija, Cavite, Bulacan and

Pampanga), as well as several others where

PARRDS has contacts (Northern Samar, Antique,

and Marinduque). This first round of ProCARRDs

was characterized by lively discussions by farmers

on actual land dispute cases. In some provinces,

the consultations resulted in the establishment of

operational mechanisms for resolving actual land

dispute cases (PARRDS Annual Report 1995).

Meanwhile, coalition-building initiatives gave birth

to new coalitional formations in the remaining

three provinces (Davao del Norte, Cebu, and

South Cotabato) where PARRDS had launchedARRD coalition-building efforts the previous

year, but where ProCARRDs were not conducted

in 1995. In all seven PARRDS provinces, emerg-

ing local coalitions spearheaded local mobiliza-

tions, PO-NGO-GO dialogues and negotiations,

and advocacy campaigns around ARRD issues


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WORK IN PROGRESS



and concerns linked to the specific profiles of their

respective provinces.

In addition to these activities both in defense of

CARPs integrity as such (MORE-AR) and in an

effort to implement agrarian reform from below

(PhilCARRD, ProCARRDs, and provincial coa-

lition activities) PARRDS was active in re-

sponding to the rice crisis which hit the country

in 1995. Working with a number of other pro-

gressive networks and organizations concerned

about the immediate food crisis in particular and

its implications for the countrys long-term food

security in general, PARRDS initiated or partici-pated in numerous mobilizations, consultations,

workshops and dialogues with Department of

Agriculture officials. In particular, PARRDS was

active in initiating the Kilusang Kasarinlan sa

Pagkain (KSP, or Food Security Movement), a

multisectoral action group directed at articulating

and projecting both short-term and long-term so-

lutions to the rice crisis. One of PARRDS key

demands was a recall of the Ramos

administrations Grains Production Enhancement

Program (GPEP) and its Medium-Term Agricul-

tural Development Program (MTADP).

PARRDS also worked to highlight a progressive

analysis of the rice crisis and larger food security

issues with its second Rural Development Expo-

sition and Trade Fair (RDETF), again organized

around World Food Day.

Finally, in spite of its busy schedule, PARRDS

managed to undertake important organization

building and maintenance activities in 1995. Theseincluded a series of education and training semi-

nars in selected PARRDS provinces (Cavite,

Bulacan, Pampanga and Nueva Ecija), a train-

ers training with participants from these and

other Luzon provinces, and an internal assessment

and strategic planning exercise (ASPE) in Novem-

ber 1995. Described as a major organizational

undertaking, the November 1995 ASPE gath-

ered together 44 PARRDS activists from the

working board, national secretariat and provin-cial coalitions. For five days the participants re-

viewed PARRDS performance over the past year

and a half, analyzed its internal capacity and ex-

ternal environment, and laid out strategic options

for the next two years (1996-1998).

The following were viewed as PARRDS strong

points: effective advocacy and campaigns, active

interface with reform-oriented government enti-

ties, effective combining of national and local

work, successful accessing of (financial) re-sources, strong commitment and unity of mem-

bers, and effective harnessing of members expe-

rience. The following were seen as PARRDS

weak spots: ineffective media work, financial in-

stability of some member organizations, lack of

internal review processes, inattention to field op-

erations by the national secretariat and the work-

ing board, understaffed and overworked secre-

tariat, and lack of clear systems and policies for

accessing and using common resources.

The following were viewed as PARRDS strate-

gic options for 1996-1998: to use PARRDS cred-

ibility to help member NGOs and POs access re-

sources from donor organizations and govern-

ment; to launch more ARRD campaigns, settle

unresolved (internal) issues, and add staff to take

advantage of government structures and avert

evasion of CARP implementation; to level off on

expectations, functions, framework and strategies,

to set up an appropriate structure based on the re-sults of a leveling off process, and to sustain

and develop PhilCARRD and other ARRD-based

coalition efforts; and to explore and develop

ARRD advocacy in all arenas (legislative, execu-

tive and public) in order to generate support for

ARRD and to challenge the governments devel-

opment program (Summary of Issues, SWOT


12/33


WORK IN PROGRESS


Analysis Points, and Strategic Options and

Choices, November 1995 ASPE).

1996: National Positioning and Local Strength-

ening

Between the series of national summits held by

the Ramos government in preparation for the years

major event, the November APEC (Asia-Pacific

Economic Cooperation) Summit, and the work

program which PARRDS had set out for itself

during the November 1995 ASPE, 1996 was an

extremely busy year for PARRDS. Based on the

1995 ASPE results, PARRDS entered 1996 withfour major objectives: to strengthen itself as a

whole and consolidate the seven provincial coali-

tions; to position the ARRD national representa-

tional and negotiating coalitional mechanism; to

refine its programs and targets at the national and

international levels; and to help strengthen its

member organizations (PARRDS January-June

1996 Activity Report).

Initial steps toward internal strengthening were

taken during the first quarter of 1996 through a

series of consultations (All-Pilot Provinces Review

and Planning Exercise or APPRAP) between

national board and secretariat members on the one

hand, and representatives of the different local

member organizations in the seven PARRDS

provinces on the other. The reported results of the

APPRAP process suggest that while coalition

work and strengthening were proceeding in each

of the provinces, the degree of coalition strength-

ening was uneven. Some provinces had alreadymade significant progress in institutionalizing both

coalition mechanisms in local civil society, and

state-society channels for NGO/PO and govern-

ment interface at the local level (Bulacan,

Pampanga, Nueva Ecija, Cavite, Cebu). Others

had made progress more in terms of NGO/PO and

government interface (South Cotabato and Davao

del Norte). Meanwhile, the national secretariat

also held a series of meetings with representatives

of the member organizations and provincial coa-litions to exchange information on developments

in the national and local ARRD landscape, and

to identify ways for the secretariat to better help

strengthen member organizations as a step toward

strengthening the coalition. Memorandums of

agreement were drawn up as a result of these

meetings. Finally, members of the PARRDS staff

also participated in a number of trainers

trainings as part of the development of PARRDS

support services function.

In terms of national advocacy efforts, PARRDS

was involved in a number of activities, beginning

with the National Food Security Summit in Janu-

ary. It participated in both the regional consulta-

tions and national summit. PARRDS also took

part in various workshops and consultations held

just after the National Food Summit in prepara-

tion for the official MTADP Review under the

new agriculture secretary. The following month,

as a follow-up to the January summit, PARRDS

was active as co-convenor, along with MODE,

of the Southeast Asian Conference on Food Se-

curity and Fair Trade. PARRDS participated in

other food security-related activities as well, all

of which were geared toward NGO/PO prepara-

tion for the Rome Food Summit later that year.

In March, another national summit was held in

relation to the Ramos governments development

program, this time the Anti-Poverty Summit, for

which PARRDS pursued a two-pronged tactic.

While one group participated inside the summitand tried to influence the outcomes of the work-

shops, another group stayed outside the summit

hall and took part in a rally held to criticize and

put pressure on the government. In addition to

these pre-summit preparatory and summit-related

activities, 1996 was marked also by the holding

of an NGO forum on APEC and other related


13/33

WORK IN PROGRESS



activities in preparation for the November sum-

mit held in the Philippines. For its part, PARRDS

was a major player in the parallel Manila PeoplesForum on APEC (MPFA) and an active organizer

the MPFA parallel conference and the regional

and sectoral workshops conducted throughout

1996 in preparation for the culminating event.

Finally, above and beyond its internal strength-

ening activities on the one hand and its involve-

ment in various summit-related activities on the

other, PARRDS also undertook its traditional June

to October ARRD campaign, as in previous years.

The 1996 campaign, PARRDS signature activ-ity, revolved around three distinct components:

the June 9-12 National ARRD Consultation

(NatCARRD), a series of ProCARRDS held from

July to September, and World Food Day in Octo-

ber. Compared to the previous years campaigns,

a distinctive elements of the 1996 ARRD cam-

paign was the addition of the Department of En-

vironment and Natural Resources (DENR) to the

list of government agencies with which PARRDS

initiated dialogues. Indeed, throughout 1996,

PARRDS maintained a busy schedule of meet-

ings and dialogues with top-level officials from

numerous government departments, including the

DENR, DAR, DA and the National Food Au-

thority (NFA), on matters raised in relation to the

different summits and the NatCARRD. The par-

ticipation in the NatCARRD of the League of

Municipalities of the Philippines (LMP) through

its president was also something new, for it

marked PARRDS growing attention to local

governments as arenas for mainstreaming a pro-gressive ARRD agenda.

According to the official NatCARRD report, six

consensus points or calls for action were reached

at the 1996 NatCARRD (attendance 200). These

were: to address problems in CARP implemen-

tation through the creation of a Special Action

Committee on Land Tenure Improvement Prob-

lems (SALCOTIP); to organize a task force to

study and propose changes to the CARL in viewof the end of its 10-year implementation period;

to hold ProCARRDS in 30 provinces to enhance

PO-NGO-GO interaction and speed up ARRD

in a participatory and empowering manner; to

push for revisions in the MTADP to ensure more

meaningful small farmer participation in agricul-

tural policy formulation, sustainable farming and

food security; to use various existing DENR

programs to promote speedier, more transparent

and more participatory distribution of public

lands; and to explore ways of making local gov-ernment more democratic and responsive to

ARRD concerns.

1997: Increasing Centrifugal Pressures

on the PARRDS Network

In 1997 PARRDS mounted national advocacy

campaign in response to a number of new chal-

lenges that arose on the ARRD political land-scape. These challenges can be divided into three

broad categories: new threats to agrarian reform

and CARP implementation, new threats to agri-

culture and rural development, and threats to its

ARRD agenda in general from a well-organized

campaign to amend the 1987 Constitution (with

anti-reform implications). Much of PARRDS

activities for the year were responses to these

threats, as well as efforts to build momentum in

the ARRD movement going into June 1998, when

CARPs originally mandated 10-year implemen-tation period was scheduled to end. New threats

to agrarian reform and CARP implementation

took the form of an organized campaign by real

estate brokers seeking to stop further implemen-

tation, a World Bank paper on rural development

policy recommending that the Philippine govern-

ment adopt a market-assisted land reform strat-


14/33


WORK IN PROGRESS


egy in the 24 hectares-and-below category of land-

holdings, and finally, several specific and contro-

versial CARP-related land disputes that revealeddramatically the reinvigoration of anti-reform

forces in Mindanao (the Sumilao CARP reversal

case and the Stanfilco banana plantation case).

In response to the real estate brokers anti-reform

campaign, PARRDS participated in a special

PhilCARRD session, where it was decided that

PhilCARRD would focus its advocacy efforts on

ensuring the passage of an Agrarian Reform Fund

Augmentation bill. At the time, the bill was per-

ceived by PARRDS national leaders to hold thekey to CARPs continuity after 1998.

PARRDS then took the lead role in exposing the

World Bank policy paper and taking the Bank to

task for its recommendations and lack of consul-

tation with stakeholders in the NGO-PO com-

munity. As a result, the World Bank requested a

dialogue with PARRDS and other ARRD for-

mations, organizations it had left out of its official

consultation process. At the dialogue held in June

1997, representatives of PARRDS and other

groups presented a common position paper, which

among others, called on the Bank to drop its rec-

ommendation for a market-assisted approach to

land reform. Notably, none of the organizations

associated with the social democratic network

ARRD formation called AR NOW signed the

paper, but instead initiated their own consultation

process with the World Bank two months later

and produced a separate response paper which

did not go as far as PARRDS and other groupshad in rejecting outright the Banks recommen-

dation on market-assisted land reform. Their

less than outright rejection of the proposal, in turn,

was cited positively by the World Bank in their

revised rural strategy paper as an

acknowledgement of the potentials for a mar-

ket-assisted approach as an alternative to CARP

in the 24 hectares and below category of land-

holdings. Meanwhile, the first meeting between

the World Bank and PARRDS led to a secondone in December 1997, during which the World

Bank representatives responded to the NGO-PO

position presented earlier.

Finally, in this same year, PARRDS responded

to the eruption of both the Stanfilco banana plan-

tation case and that of the Sumilao farmers. In the

latter case, PARRDS and others attempted to raise

public discussion of the case to the policy level

despite objections by some groups that doing so

might hurt the effort underway to resolve theSumilao case itself. PARRDS and its allies rea-

soned that other CARP reversals had already oc-

curred and were likely to continue to occur in the

absence of legal prohibitions. The Sumilao case

was resolved later that year by President Ramos

before it could reach the level of a wider policy

debate on land conversions, while the issue of

CARP reversals was still pending as of the first

quarter of 1998.

Apart from these activities, PARRDS became a

major player in setting up the Philippine National

Peasant Caucus (PNPC), a broad national coali-

tion of POs whose specific advocacy focus would

be trade and trade liberalization issues. PARRDS

acted as the secretariat for part of the founding

congress and facilitated regional PNPC confer-

ences. Meanwhile, PARRDS also held in several

dialogues with different government agencies on

different burning ARRD topics, including na-

tional land use policy and trade issues, as well asNGO-PO-GO meetings on issues arising from the

Congressional Agricultural Commission

(AGRICOMM) and its output, the agricultural

modernization bill. PARRDS was part of the

Technical Working Group set up to conduct a

series of consultations on a National Land and

Water Use Code. Finally, PARRDS served as the


15/33

WORK IN PROGRESS



secretariat to a national meeting in March, the

Second DAR-NGO-PO Workshop on Fast-track-

ing CARP Implementation. This initiative laterevolved into the Project 40 Now! campaign to

expand the ProCARRDS to 40 provinces and to

focus them on pre-identified priority landholdings

and land dispute cases. The Project 40 Now cam-

paign and series of meetings also opened up a new

venue for further discussion and processing of

burning policy issues and key advocacy initiatives,

including national land and water use policy, the

Sumilao case, and the agricultural modernization

bill then pending in Congress.

Brief Profile of PARRDS in Selected

Provinces as of the First Quarter of

1998 4

Davao del Norte

Davao del Norte is saddled with an almost sol-

idly anti-reform local DAR bureaucracy with close

ties to anti-reform DAR officials at the nationallevel. The few pro-reform DAR personnel in the

province have been confined to peripheral posi-

tions within the local bureaucracy. The provin-

cial and local government units in Davao del Norte

appear to be solidly anti-reform as well. Both the

local government units (LGUs) and the local DAR

are often controlled or strongly influenced by lo-

cal landed elites who are intensely anti-reform.

The character of the local landowning elite and

farming system seems to be a mixture of tradi-

tional (concentrated on coconut) and modern-

izing (concentrated on banana). Particularly in

terms of the banana industry, local anti-reform

interests are well-organized through the Philippine

Banana Growers and Exporters Association

(PBGEA). The anti-reform current in the prov-

ince is thus very strong and consolidated, stretch-

ing from key sites within the state to key sites in

society. Adding to this already inhospitable po-

litical environment, however, is the fact that there

is little, if any, significant support for pro-reforminitiatives in the province from other groups or

sectors in society that could help to offset the or-

ganized weight of anti-reform interests. Neither

the local institutional churches nor the local and

regional media nor local academe has shown

much interest in supporting local pro-reform ini-

tiatives. For the most part, the pro-reform forces

remain limited to the society side of the picture

(PARRDS-related POs and NGOs, plus a few

non-PARRDS NGOs), but within local society

they are relatively isolated politically.

Nonetheless, intensive activity is going on around

CARP implementation. Local LTI (land tenure

improvement) struggles are diverse in character,

revolving around two distinct pro-reform currents

that are addressed by PARRDS-related local

NGOs and POs. The first current is based on

workers struggles in the many large commercial

farms producing bananas for the international

market (mainly Japan, China and Korea), and thus

involves a complex combination of agrarian and

trade union issues. The second current of pro-re-

form activity is based on the struggles of small

tenant farmers producing mostly coconut and some

rice. This involves mainly agrarian issues, while

also being linked to the nationwide political battle

of organized small coconut farmers to recover the

infamous coco levy funds and use them to reha-

bilitate the countrys strategic but crisis-ridden

coconut industry.

With regard to the first current, the struggle for

full and meaningful CARP implementation in

Davao del Norte is in the midst of intensification

as June 1998 approaches. How these struggles

turn out will have far-reaching implications for

CARP implementation in commercial farms in

other provinces and regions. Within this first cur-


16/33


WORK IN PROGRESS


rent of AR activity, PARRDS continues to ac-

tively support the efforts of banana farmworkers,

such as ALDA, the independent PO at theDOLE-Stanfilco plantation in Panabo, to assert

their rights to organize themselves and to benefit

from CARP. In addition, PARRDS is providing

various kinds of support (political, technical and

moral) to disenfranchised banana farmworkers

and small farmer settlers who are victims of

landgrabbing by big commercial banana grow-

ers. These farmworkers and settlers are now mov-

ing to strengthen the horizontal linkages between

their different organizations in order to strengthen

their AR advocacy efforts, particularly against thechain of commercial banana farms owned by An-

tonio Floirendo, the former Marcos crony. Most

recently, PARRDS provided financial assistance

to the newly emerging network of banana

farmworkers organizations for the founding con-

gress of Banana Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries

Association, Incorporated (BARBAI), their new

Davao peninsula-wide PO.

With regard to the second current of AR efforts,

that involving small coconut farmers seeking LTI

within the framework of CARP, PARRDS also

continues to support these efforts mainly through

its anchoring of the ProCARRD and facilitation

of various kinds of support services. This second

current of ground-level LTI struggles, however,

seems to be losing momentum as cases brought

forward by local farmers groups and their

PARRDS-related local support NGOs get stuck

in midstream, either in the local DAR or in the

local courts. The relative socio- political and geo-graphic isolation of the peasants engaged in local

claim-taking struggles appears to make them es-

pecially vulnerable to localized forms of anti-re-

form resistance, most notably foot-dragging by

local DAR personnel and legal harassment by

landlords. In addition, according to local PO lead-

ers, there is still a big need to find ways to extend

the reach of basic ground-level training and edu-

cation about CARP, its provisions, requirements

and procedures. Indeed, PARRDS involvementin Davao del Norte, mainly reflected in the CO

and ProCARRD-related work of its lead NGO,

currently centers almost exclusively on AR (rather

than RD) issues. This is understandable, given the

extremely inhospitable environment for full and

meaningful CARP implementation in the prov-

ince.

Cebu

Cebu continues to be ravaged by an elite-driven,neoliberal-inspired industrialization project that

has led to massive land conversion and the fur-

ther socioeconomic marginalization of the islands

rural poor. Cebu lies at the center of an official

interisland regional development plan which en-

tails the use of natural resources from islands

(Leyte, Bohol, Negros) surrounding Cebu for the

latters intensive remaking into the regions po-

litical, economic and luxury tourist center. Accord-

ing to this plan, Cebu is to become a premier re-

gional industrial center (RIC) with shipbuilding

facilities, a national telecommunications center and

a luxury tourist enclave for the regional elite. As

a result of ongoing moves to realize this plan,

Cebus remaining agricultural areas are now un-

der serious threat. This situation has given rise in

turn to a diversity of local land struggles in the

province.

In northern Cebu, where the islands sugarlands

are concentrated, sugarworkers are scaling uptheir collective actions and organizations from the

hacienda level to the intermunicipal level in order

to strengthen their impact on a dragging agrarian

reform process. Here CARP implementation has

been slowed down by the machinations of des-

potic landlords who are now also seeing increased

incentives to convert portions of their vast haci-


17/33

WORK IN PROGRESS



endas into golf courses and seaside resorts. In the

central part of the island, small rice farmers strug-

gling for LTI via CARP are up against govern-ment efforts to transform the area into a port and

shipbuilding facility. There the local peasant or-

ganizations and their support NGOs, including

PARRDS lead NGO in the province, are con-

fronted with the difficult decision of whether to

continue fighting against big odds for their right

to own the land and to maintain it for agriculture,

or to let it go and start working instead on posi-

tioning for a decent relocation site. A similar situ-

ation exists similar in the southern part of Cebu

province, where urban industrial sprawl contin-ues to overtake the islands traditional vegetable

basket. In both areas, but especially in the south,

the ongoing claim-taking initiatives of potential

CARP beneficiaries face a combination of legal

and illegal obstacles. But while many land dis-

pute cases appear to be bogged down in red tape

during the CARP implementation process, others

are being lost de facto on the ground as a result of

legal and illegal land conversions.

Yet, unlike in Davao Norte where few political

openings exist for meaningful engagement with

reformist government officials in favor of CARP

implementation, local PARRDS-related groups

(both PO and NGO) in Cebu have found some

openings and been able to take advantage of them.

For example, the chairm of the PARRDS-related

peasant alliance in Cebu also chairs of the

PARCCOM, while the executive director of the

lead NGO of PARRDS in the province is like-

wise a member of the PARCCOM and was re-cently named head of the provincial Social Re-

form Council. The PO representative on the

PARCCOM is also a local PO leader in one of

the sugar haciendas in northern Cebu being ser-

viced by the lead NGO of PARRDS. These same

POs and NGOs play a lead role in the

ProCARRD. In short, PARRDS-related groups

at the local level have been able to position them-

selves well in key local bodies that shape the AR

and social policy implementation process and havea mandate from the government. Perhaps this rela-

tively good positioning could be viewed as even

more significant in light of the fact that the offi-

cial provincial development plan does not com-

pletely rule out agriculture, but still assigns a place

to farming in principle.

Many problems persist, however, including the

small working scope of CARP implementation

set by the DAR for the province. Of Cebus

110,000 hectares of agricultural land, only 38,000are considered part of the DARs working scope.

It does not include several sugar haciendas in the

north which average more than 300 hectares each.

Another problem is the persistence of legal and

illegal forms of landlord resistance on the ground

and via the CARP process itself. In some areas

farmers and farmworker beneficiaries have al-

ready received Certificates of Land Ownership

Awards (CLOAs), but are prevented from occu-

pying the land by landowner resistance. In other

instances, qualified farmers have simply been ex-

cluded from the official list of beneficiaries.

Sugarworkers are being retrenched by hacienda

owners as punishment for joining efforts to push

for CARP implementation. Meanwhile, the lack

of feedback and monitoring mechanisms within

the ProCARRD channel means problematic LTI

cases are raised to central DAR officials who at-

tend the provincial consultations with POs and

NGOs, but the situation often fails to go beyond

the status quo once the consultation is over. Suchfailure may be due to the local DARs inability to

keep up with all the cases brought up during the

consultations, or the inability of DAR central of-

ficials to keep after local DAR personnel to en-

sure a successful and timely conclusion in each

case. Yet another problem faced by local POs and

NGOs is difficulty in following up specific cases


18/33


WORK IN PROGRESS


of local land disputes that get sent up to the cen-

tral DAR office for resolution. Many local cases

end up languishing indefinitely in the DARs cen-tral office because of the logistical difficulties of

bringing social pressure to bear on the national

DAR officials handling them.

Leyte

The DAR national office considers Leyte as a pri-

ority area for CARP implementation. With this

added push from the central office, combined with

social pressure from below and the opening of

new institutional mechanisms for handling prob-lematic cases, the local DAR has become more

cooperative with the NGO-PO community than

it was in previous years. But serious obstacles to

implementation remain, making the challenge of

maximizing opportunities for reform under CARP

difficult and slow. Plans for regional industrial-

ization have increased incentives for the conver-

sion of agricultural lands into non-agricultural

uses. Land conversions are on the increase in

Tacloban, as well as in Ormoc, a designated sat-

ellite city of the Cebu regional industrial center

(RIC). Conversions are made easier by the lack

of clear guidelines on whether local government

units (LGUs), through local zoning ordinances,

or the DAR, through CARP, has priority in de-

termining the fate of certain lands. Local DAR

officials have also been lax in defending agri-

cultural lands in the face of LGUs eager to de-

velop these for non-agricultural uses. Increased

incentives for landowners to seek conversion of

holdings is also a factor in the strong landownersintervention in the land valuation process. They

often simply refuse to accept the rates set by the

DAR. CARP reversals also occur, at times facili-

tated by local DAR officials. Other problems are

lack of registration of actual claims, non-distribu-

tion of registered CLOAs to actual beneficiaries,

and inclusion of unqualified claimants and exclu-

sion of qualified ones. Of the official DAR 1997

target of 10,500 hectares for CARP implementa-

tion in Leyte, only 3,000 hectares were actually(re)distributed.

Unsurprisingly, potential beneficiaries often re-

quire much convincing before they accept that

CARP has something to offer, while efforts to

convince them are hampered further by the time

it often takes for the DAR to actually install farm-

ers on lands awarded them. One problem cited is

the lack of funds for the required surveys. Mean-

while, there is still only limited political space for

pro-reform activists and advocates, whether NGOor GO, to enter certain local areas because of LGU

officials suspicions that they may be organizing

for another cause (either the underground revo-

lutionary movement, or if during election time, a

particular candidate). Local PARRDS-related

NGOs and POs also suffer from very limited

funds for organizing around ARRD issues and

concerns.

As in other PARRDS provinces, the work of lo-

cal PARRDS-related groups in Leyte has centered

on trying to build and sustain the pro-reform mo-

mentum under less-than-ideal conditions. Active

participation in the ProCARRD has helped to

generate the momentum of CARP implementa-

tion in the past year or so. Viewed from below,

the ProCARRD has served as a mechanism both

for engaging with local DAR officials and for

networking among NGOs and POs and potential

CARP beneficiary communities. As a mechanism

for state-society interface or engagement, it seemsto have jump-started implementation, strength-

ening both pressures from below and the reform-

ist current within the local DAR. The

ProCARRDs constitute a pro-reform mechanism

from which local DAR personnel cannot escape.

But while the initiative to conduct such consulta-

tions below the provincial level must still come


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WORK IN PROGRESS



from below (or it is likely they will not happen),

the idea of institutionalizing this kind of PO-NGO-

GO engagement is now more widely acceptedwithin the DAR itself than before. By April 1998,

the different NGOs on the ProCARRD steering

committee (some related to PARRDS, others not)

will conduct 12 MuCARRDs (Municipal Con-

sultation on ARRD), with each NGO initiating

the consultation in its area of operation.

Nueva Ecija

Nueva Ecija has long been considered the rice

bowl of the Philippines and one of the nationalcenters of the Philippine peasant movement. As

such, it has been historically the focus of much

attention by central state elites trying to implement

high political impact AR programs that typically

stop short of actual land redistribution. But while

the province has also been often assumed to be

one of the main beneficiaries of past agrarian re-

form programs, the reality is that the question of

how to achieve full and meaningful agrarian re-

form remains a critical problem in Nueva Ecija

today. Implementation of P.D. 27 (the Marcos AR

program) is still incomplete in many cases on the

one hand, while on the other, CARP implemen-

tation continues to be slow and difficult amidst

strong resistance from local anti-reform forces.

On top of existing backlogs in the implementa-

tion of P.D. 27, there are many backlogs as well

under CARP. The latter are the result of both nar-

row target-setting (so that many CARPable and

contested landholdings have been excluded apriori), and overreporting of actual land acquisi-

tion and distribution accomplishments by the lo-

cal DAR to the central office. Although the re-

gional DAR director is said to be open to reform

and considered a reliable ally by local AR activ-

ists and advocates, members of the local DAR

bureaucracy (provincial level down) are not. Many

end up being anti-reform by default instead, re-

maining silent, for example, while LGUs team up

with real estate developers to push through legaland illegal conversions of irrigated and unirrigated

ricelands and vegetable farms into housing sub-

divisions, shopping malls, industrial estates and

golf courses. Many others can be described as

actively working with despotic local landlords us-

ing authoritarian-clientelist means to limit the scope

of CARP implementation and to derail democratic

claim-taking initiatives by organized peasants,

both landless and near-landless. Finally, an addi-

tional threat to full and meaningful CARP imple-

mentation today can be found in the activities inthe province of the reaffirmist (RA) group, that

part of the CPP-led underground revolutionary

movement that did not break away from the CPP

leadership in 1993. Based on its outright

rejectionist stance toward CARP, it has been

subjecting PARRDS-related NGOs and POs to

different kinds of harassment.

Against this less-than-hospitable social and po-

litical backdrop, however, local NGOs and POs

engaged in claim-taking initiatives around

CARP implementation have emerged, and they

pose a significant challenge to local anti-reform

currents, with impressive results. Using a combi-

nation of social mobilizations of POs from be-

low and of allies in the DAR central office as

well as international solidarity support from

above, local AR activists have managed to com-

pletely consummate many local struggles for

land (both under P.D. 27 and under CARP) and

to make significant progress in many others aswell. Their efforts in resolving land cases in the

province have been so effective that one of the

PARRDS-related local NGOs, EMPOWER-

MENT Inc., is now regularly approached by farm-

ers who are not members of its partner PO, but

still seek its assistance in unresolved AR cases. It

may well have been partly in recognition of the


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WORK IN PROGRESS


creativity, persistence and relative effectiveness

of local AR claim-taking efforts that the very first

ProCARRD in the Philippines took place inNueva Ecija in 1995. But while it was the

ProCARRD in other PARRDS provinces that

prompted coalition work around AR, it was an

already established independent local coalition in

Nueva Ecija that provided a push to the

ProCARRD. Even before Nueva Ecija became a

PARRDS province, local NGOs and POs en-

gaged in AR work were already beginning to

work together in the context of a broad

multisectoral coalition called Konped Kalikasan.

Encouraged by the local AR NGOs, the Konpedgroup put up its own AR desk, and it is from here

that the past and present PARRDS lead NGOs

and provincial coalition-builders (PCBs) have

been drawn. Since 1995, however, the

ProCARRD has become the main venue for coa-

litional activity around AR, while those most ac-

tive in the ProCARRD are past and present

PARRDS lead NGOs and POs.

Negros Occidental

Virtually untouched both by past government

agrarian reform programs and by globalization

trends, Negros Occidental remains dominated by

large haciendas devoted mainly to sugar and

owned by some of the countrys biggest landlord

families, including the Cojuangcos, Benedictos,

Aranetas and Lopezes. The province is the baili-

wick of one of the most powerful anti-reform and

anti-democratic political currents in the country

today. As a whole, Negros Occidental continuesto be an especially eloquent symbol of the urgent

need for full and meaningful agrarian reform and

rural development. Prior to the reinvigoration of

CARP implementation in the early to mid-1990s,

very little progress in land reform was made

less than eight percent of a working scope of

300,000 hectares between 1972 and 1992. What-

ever progress there was appears to have been lim-

ited to landholdings not controlled by the biggest

landowners. Historically, pro-reform actors bothin the local DAR bureaucracy and in society have

been weak politically, relative to the especially

virulent authoritarian-clientelist character of the

anti-reform landowning elite, that has made open-

legal democratic political activity among the ru-

ral poor extremely difficult and risky.

Unsurprisingly, the extremely limited political

space for openly organizing pro-reform interests

contributed to the emergence and growth of the

underground revolutionary movement in Negros

Occidental in the 1980s.

Since the CPP split in 1993, however, a reinvigo-

rated local peasant movement has gradually

emerged and is actively engaged in PARRDS-

type initiatives for fast-tracking full and meaning-

ful CARP implementation in and around the

provinces sugarlands. Currently the most active

and widespread local peasant organization (PO)

with a strong presence in 60 of the provinces

sugar haciendas is the Negros Occidental federa-

tion of Farmers Associations (NOFFA), a local

affiliate of PARRDS member organization

DKMP. It was NOFFA that broke the prolonged

silence around CARP implementation in Negros

Occidental last year, when an estimated two thou-

sand members converged in the provincial capi-

tal, Bacolod City, on June 10, 1997 to protest the

slow pace and anti-reform direction of implemen-

tation there. As a result of NOFFAs mobiliza-

tion, the provincial agrarian reform officer

(PARO) was replaced with someone reputed tobe more open to reform, though this remains to

be seen. In addition to NOFFA, two other local

groups (Negros Ecumenical Development Cen-

ter or NEDC and Negros Rural Development In-

stitute or NRDI) are actively organizing

sugarworkers and potential land reform benefi-

ciaries, while the local NGO Quedan


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WORK IN PROGRESS



KAISAHAN is providing CARP legal training

and education services to potential CARP ben-

eficiaries as well. Together, these four groupsappear to constitute the main pro-reform political

pole in Negros Occidental on the civil society

side of the ARRD landscape. They appear to be

the key players in the ProCARRD as well. Along

with two other NGOs (Family Food and PDG),

these six are considered by the provincial DAR

as their main PO-NGO partners in fast-tracking

CARP implementation.

By the end of 1997, the Negros Occidental DAR

reported a cumulative accomplishment of 91,850hectares out of a total working scope of 244,000

hectares, or 37 percent. Though an improvement,

this is still a very slow pace of implementation,

well behind the national average. Moreover, in-

cluded in the DARs cumulative accomplishment

report are strategic landholdings where it is far

from clear that the farmer-beneficiaries will in fact

benefit from CARP in the end. In particular,

the DAR report includes the Cojuangco landhold-

ing where the joint venture agreement provi-

sion of CARP is being applied under highly ques-

tionable circumstances. One of the most question-

able aspects of the case is the extreme secrecy sur-

rounding the negotiations that took place between

the landowner and the DAR, as well as the exact

nature of the outcomes of those negotiations. This

true to another negotiated terms of land reform in

the Benedicto estate. While statements of local and

national DAR officials portray the Cojuangco and

Benedicto CARP deals as major breakthroughs,

the full details have yet to be disclosed. Evensugarworkers in the affected landholdings appear

to know little, if anything, about the agreements

reached. This apparent lack of transparency

strongly suggests that organized sugarworkers and

their NGO allies are systematically being excluded

from the critical phases of implementation in or-

der to ensure a smooth process and palatable out-

come for the landowners. Whose interests are ac-

tually being served in these cases? The answer is

far from clear, and that in itself is increasingly dis-concerting to many of the local AR activists and

their allies.

Summary of Findings

PARRDS as an AR Advocacy Actor

Over time, PARRDS has done a relatively good

job of positioning itself in the larger political arena

around key issues related to agrarian reform and

CARP implementation, though its interventions

have certainly not eliminated the obstacles to full

and meaningful AR implementation. Foot-drag-

ging and outright manipulation of the AR pro-

cess by anti-reform DAR officials, legal and ille-

gal delay and evasion tactics by resistant landlords,

or potential beneficiaries political and geographic

isolation or unfamiliarity with the agrarian reform

law and its procedural requirements all these

continue to be obstacles on the AR landscape. Yet,

despite these and other persistent obstacles to fulland meaningful land reform, PARRDS interven-

tions have led to complete consummation of

land transfer in many cases, and to significant

progress, however small, in others. Given the

difficulty of the process of CARP implementa-

tion so far, it is clear that in a number of ways

PARRDS efforts over the past four years have

had made a positive impact on three distinct areas

of agrarian reform-related advocacy work: CARP

implementation, CARP integrity and CARP con-

tinuity.

The first broad category has to do with problems

of CARP implementation, specifically its slow

pace and the tendency toward clientelist modes.

PARRDS has made its most significant mark on

contemporary AR dynamics through its persistent

and innovative efforts to address the perennial


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WORK IN PROGRESS


problem of slow-paced CARP implementation.

It has done this by combining different forms of

action via formal institutional channels suchas the media, PhilCARRD, NatCARRD and

ProCARRDS, informal, extra-institutional

channels such as parliament of the streets types

of mobilization, including international letter-writ-

ing campaigns, rallies and camp-outs, as well as

extralegal tactics such as land occupation, hu-

man tree-chaining (to prevent landlords from

cutting down coconut trees as a step to land con-

version) and more recently, tambakan (or or-

ganized dumping of farm products at local DAR

offices). PARRDS has also combined differentlevels of action: personal one-on-one discussions,

national dialogues and rallies, provincial-level en-

gagements with local DAR officials. This kind of

combined forms and levels of action approach,

sometimes been referred to as the bibingka strat-

egy, has been used successfully by PARRDS-

related groups to influence the outcome of numer-

ous specific land disputes. (See Borras, 1998).

It is this kind of approach that continues to set

PARRDS apart from other AR advocacy groups

today. In particular, through such an approach,

PARRDS has helped to increase the political space

and resources available to potential CARP ben-

eficiary groups for engaging in claim-taking ac-

tions the value of which outright opposition-

ists underestimate and uncritical collaboration-

ists too often overlook. In asserting their legal

right to land within the framework of CARP

through both institutionalized and extra-institu-

tionalized means, landless farmers andfarmworkers have themselves helped to weaken,

even if only temporarily, the clientelistic hold tra-

ditionally placed on them by unscrupulous gov-

ernment officials or trapo-oriented rural elites.

By supporting and promoting claim-taking ef-

forts by the landless or near-landless rural poor,

PARRDS has also contributed to placing limits

on undemocratic, clientelist politics, and to pro-

moting state accountability to rural poor citizens.

In addition, as a national-local network of organi-zations with international outreach capability,

PARRDS also has been instrumental in extend-

ing the political reach of many otherwise highly

localized and isolated collective claim-taking ac-

tions by potential CARP beneficiaries. For ex-

ample, PARRDS efforts helped and are continu-

ing to help bring national and international expo-

sure to the Stanfilco banana plantation

farmworkers struggling to be recognized as right-

ful beneficiaries of agrarian reform and as free

agents in the selling of their produce.

In more general terms, PARRDS efforts over the

past four years have helped to alter both th

occasional paper 12

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