CITY OF SAN FERNANDO – As the 16th Congress opened Monday, the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) backed the filing of a resolution opposing Charter change (Cha-cha) and the proposed new land reform law that seeks the nationalization and free distribution of lands to landless tillers.
KMP Secretary General Antonio Flores said that “instead of denationalizing the economy through Cha-cha’s granting of 100 percent foreign ownership of lands, the 16th Congress should heed the Filipino peasantry’s demand for the nationalization and free distribution of agricultural lands.”
“It is totally ironic that while we offer foreigners 100 percent ownership of lands, our farmers remain landless and exploited,” Flores said.
He said “Cha-cha and the sell-out of our lands to foreigners is not the solution to the increasing landlessness. It will only worsen the growing poverty and hunger suffered by our people.”
Flores said KMP is fully backing Anakpawis party-list Rep. Fernando Hicap in filing House Resolution 13 opposing Cha-cha and House Bill 252 or the Genuine Agrarian Reform Bill.
The resolution noted that “Charter change that seeks to give foreigners full ownership of lands and the denationalization of the economy will worsen and deepen semi-feudalism in the Philippines.”
“It will strengthen the control and domination of foreign big businesses, bourgeois compradors, and big landlords over the semi-feudal, agrarian, and backward economy to the detriment of genuine agrarian reform and national industrialization,” the resolution said.
The resolution also noted that “at present, millions of hectares of lands, coastal communities, and offshore areas are being targeted by large-scale and destructive mining projects led by foreign mining corporations directly undermining the rural people’s rights to the lands, their civil, political and human rights, and, the wanton destruction of the environment.”
It warned that “the removal of the constitutional prohibition on the presence and basing of foreign military forces and nuclear weapons in the country serves US interest and will result to increased US military intervention in the Philippines that is in accordance with the US military’s strategic pivot to the Asia-Pacific that would drag the Philippines to the US’ military intervention and aggression.”
Meanwhile, House Bill 252 or the Genuine Agrarian Reform Bill (GARB) “declares the nationalization of all agricultural lands in the country.”
The bill provides that the State “recognizes that only nationalization of all lands can break up the monopoly of a few landowners and foreign control of our lands.”
“It is through nationalization and the subsequent free distribution of lands to landless tillers that a genuine agrarian reform can be implemented in the country and finally end the feudal and semi-feudal exploitation of our farmers; render them social and historical justice, unleash their productive powers and set our agriculture on the right path of development,” the bill said.
