June 16, 2008
IGLESIA
FILIPINA INDEPENDIENTE
MINDANAO
BISHOPS CONFERENCE
MINBISCON Center, IFI-Bulua Compound
Bulua, Cagayan de Oro City
FILIPINOS OPPOSE CARP EXTENSION,
UNITE FOR GENUINE AGRARIAN REFORM!
Statement of Mindanao Churches
“Our Ministry is consistent with its solidarity with our brothers and sisters who are marginalized
and made poor by systems that nurture oppression. The Iglesia Filipina Independiente
is conceived through the advocacy and inspiration of the people to liberate themselves from slavery for hundred of years.
The present socio-economic and socio-political maladies stemming from half a millennium of foreign political control and landlessness,
compel the Iglesia Filipina Independiente more than ever to live out her
national and democratic heritage and her ministry of koinonia and diakonia, that the people of God may experience Jesus offer of an abundant life (John
10:10).” (Statement on Ministry)
Consistent with and in living-out our ministry, we - the bishops, priests, and
lay participants of the Mindanao Development Program Planning held on June 9-11, 2008 together with other church people, professionals,
women, indigenous people, people’s organizations, friends and concerned individuals working for the interest of the
Filipino toiling masses are deeply outraged by the government’s inutility in uplifting the economic condition of the
nation.
We stand on the belief that the Philippine economy is still agrarian and backward and is the pre-dominant
source of income and employment in the country.
In twenty (20) years now since the implementation of the Comprehensive Agrarian
Reform Program (CARP) in June 15, 1988, the lives of farmers have not improved but have gone worse. More than 800,000 hectares
of agricultural land are already converted to commercial uses since the implementation of CARP, while those that were suppose
to be grown with local crops have been converted to plantations and farmlands for high-value crops. The farm area for rice
has already shrunk by 86,606 hectares between 1991 and 2002 as a result of land use conversion.
In
the past 10 years (1998-2007), the Government has spent P119-B for the implementation of CARP earned from the revenue of the
selling of the non-performing assets of the government and the recovered ill-gotten wealth of the Marcoses. This excludes
the financial aid from the European Union and World Bank and other foreign funding institutions totaling to P62.31-B spent
to construction of roads, bridges, irrigation and other projects for the Agrarian Reform Communities that is in truth have
not able to improve the living condition of the farmer-beneficiaries for this become a source of corruption in the Arroyo
Administration.
Under the Arroyo regime, massive land conversions and land grabbing by the local elite, transnational
corporations and agri-corporations are committed through the loopholes of CARP. It has become the convenient cover for landlords
to maintain their vast land holdings and even to expand them further. Like her impassioned commitment to serve the Filipino
people, she and together with her spin-doctors in government wants to extend CARP.
But we believe that
only through the breaking of land monopoly of big landlords and foreign business corporations, and only through genuine land
reform geared towards national industrialization will the country marches towards economic progress.
Twenty
years of deceiving the farmers and the Filipino people through CARP is ALREADY ENOUGH.
We therefore call
to stop the anti-peasant land reform program under CARP; JUNK CARP and unite in the struggle for the implementation of genuine
land reform.
We firmly believe that the House Bill No. 3059 otherwise known as the Genuine Agrarian Reform
Bill will comprehensively respond to history-old struggle of the peasant sector to own land and be emancipated from the oppression
of the feudal lords and the multi-national agri-business corporations in the country.
This Bill aims to
break up land monopoly and implement free distribution of the lands within a period of five (5) years that is just to farmer-beneficiaries
and eliminate all forms of oppression and exploitation in the countryside and thereby usher the advent of genuine social justice;
to transform the farmer-beneficiaries into efficient producers through the institution of an integrated and holistic program
of support services that will nurture them toward improving their productive capabilities; to increase the income of farmer-beneficiaries
and raise their living standard through the promotion of cooperatives and other forms of mutual-aid as the main vehicle for
improving their productivity; and to install the social mechanism and measures that will secure the lands of farmer-beneficiaries
from loss and prevent the restoration of land monopoly; and to launch the thoroughgoing development of our agricultural sector
and lay the foundation for national industrialization.
We call on the members of the House of Representatives
to truly and sincerely represent their constituents by supporting and enacting into law the House Bill 3059.
We
also call on our faithful and the leadership bodies of the church to join mobilizations and even spearhead prayer rallies
and the like to manifest our solidarity with the farmers and fisherfolks and the rest of the Filipino masses in opposing the
CARP extension and the passing of the Genuine Agrarian Reform Bill as the people’s alternative.
THE RT. REV. DENNY DAPITAN
Diocese of Agusan and Surigao
Sur
THE RT. REV. PABLITO JARANTILLA
Diocese of Western Mindanao
THE RT. REV. DELFIN CALLAO
Diocese of Southern Mindanao
THE RT. REV. FELIXBERTO L. CALANG
Diocese of Misamis Oriental,
Bukidnon and Camiguin
THE RT. REV. RHEE
M. TIMBANG
Diocese of Surigao
President, Mindanao Bishops Conference
