“With the expiration of the bogus Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) or the absence of a land reform law in general, the P10.13 billion budgetary allocation of the for 2016 DAR is no less than a premeditated savings and funding source for LP bets in 2016,” said KMP Chair Rafael Mariano.
He said that “without a land reform law, the P4.5 billion allocation for land acquisition and distribution of the DAR is obviously a lump-sum allocation highly vulnerable to corruption.”
“And with the new definition of savings, the DAR budget will be another deep source of Aquino’s LP, designed to suit their fiscal and electoral agenda next year,” he added.
Mariano said CARP’s expiration on June 30, 2014 was supposed to prevent the DAR from further acquiring and distributing lands.
“At the same time, due to the Supreme Court’s decision declaring as unconstitutional the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP), Congress during the budget deliberations last year, redefined savings as portions or balances of any programmed items of appropriations which have not been released or obligated,” he noted.
“In fact, the lump sum funds were prepositioned to LP-friendly downloading stations, administration bailiwicks, and vote-rich territories,” Mariano said.
He noted that Region 6 or Western Visayas got the biggest share on the DAR’s P10-billion budget with P893.2 million.
The KMP said “the biggest slice of the DAR budget went to Region 6, a bastion of big landlords, not because vast haciendas in Negros and Panay will be placed under an expired and sham agrarian reform program but mainly because it is the LP standard bearer’s, Mar Roxas, territory.”
Mariano said the highest allocations in the DAR budget are for Region 6 with P893.2 million, Region 8 with P585.67 million, Region 5 with P536 million, Region 3 with P450 million, and Region 2 with P411 million.
“We fear that systematic electoral fraud will occur in these vote-rich regions using lump sum DAR funds,” Mariano said.
The KMP called for a “zero budget for CARP,” insisting that “the sham program already expired and that the CARP was used as a cash cow of big landlords and corrupt bureaucrats like the Cojuangco- Aquinos.”
“Insofar as there is no land reform program existing today, the bogus CARP should not have any budget at all,” the peasant leader said.
KMP cited records showing that from 1972 when Presidential Decree 27 on land reform was issued up to June 2005, the total approved Land Bank of the Philippines (LBP) compensation to 83,203 landowners for only 1.3 million hectares has already reached P41.6 billion ($783.2 million, based on an exchange rate of P53.115 per US dollar) in cash and bonds, or an average of P500,463 ($9422.25) per landlord. The fiveyear extension of CARP or CARPER, (2009-2014) also had a P150-billion budgetary allocation.
