Farmer and Landlord Should Be Friends

When Cory Aquino came to power last February, one of her key promises was to implement a genuine agrarian reform policy. Now, with less than a month to go before the members of the country's first post-revolutionary Congress takes their seats, the question is: will she or won't she?

Currently, Aquino holds complete executive and legislative power, including the power to draft and implement the proposed Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP). The proposal calls for the Philippine government to purchase land in installments from landowners and sell it back to tenants. But when Congress site on July 27, the power of legislation will be transferred. The matter will be out of Aquino's hands.

While farmers remain hopeful that an Executive Order implementing the CARP will be issued before that time, there are powerful factors which may cause Aquino to wait out the final weeks.

Although approximately 60 percent of Filipinos are employed in agriculture, 80 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, and wealthy landowners control the bulk of capital and political power. The tenant farmers have the numbers, but the landlords have the money. Both have threatened to take up arms over an unsuitable agrarian reform policy.

In this country, where an estimated 24,000 troops of the communist New People's Army (NPA) are currently engaged in a shooting war with the Philippine army, such threats are not to be taken lightly.

Amidst the swirl of opposing voices Aquino has little choice but to bend to the forces of compromise. And so paradoxically, she remains at once both enormously popular and politically impotent.

Her support arises not from organized political muscle--as it did for her deposed predecessor, Ferdinand Marcos--but from personal charisma. After the martyrdom of her husband, former Senator Benigno Aquino, her political innocence became her strong card in the presidential race against the incumbent Marcos and his perceived cynical machinations.

Her self-proclaimed status as "merely a housewife" has enabled her, in the eyes of the public, to remain above the plots and controversies that have plagued her administration. At the same time, however, this status has prevented her from taking decisive stands on issues.

Aquino's failure to transform popular backing into political backbone may force her to leave land reform to Congress--or, at best, to effect, a weak compromise position. Indeed, the series of draft Executive Orders released periodically of late indicates that a constantly revised compromise is being toyed with; there are reasons to suspect, though, that ultimately Aquino will forego any issuance at all.

One reason is that, as a landowner herself, Aquino holds title to nearly 1000 hectares of land at her family's estate, the Hacienda Luisita. She is more than a simple housewife. She is also an heiress of the powerful Cojuangco clan, and as such faces pressure from within her own family to avoid a land reform program that would destroy its livelihood. Indeed, the pressure led her to reject a trial land reform project at the Hacienda Luisita.

Another is the question of political expediency. Like a contestant on "The Price is Right," Aquino must decide whether to keep what she's got, or to go for what's behind door No. 2.

If she waits out the time until July 27, she will probably retain her high popularity nevertheless. But if she issues the Executive Order, she will be held responsible, favorably or negatively, for a program that can hardly hope to please all concerned.

Should Aquino not issue the Executive Order on CARP, the chances for comprehensive agrarian reform seem dim. The majority of newly elected congressmen are landowners themselves, backed by the landowning class. As such they stand even less to gain from agrarian reform than does Aquino herself.

The World Bank has announced that it does not consider the proposed CARP plan a viable program, primarily for reasons of funding. The government is severely strapped for cash. Originally the funds to be recovered from Marcos' illegal dealings were to be used to fund the agrarian reform program; much of this money, however, has yet to materialize.

Furthermore, on June 30 the government announced that only 4 billion pesos ($200 million) of the 13 billion pesos ($650 million) formerly earmarked for agrarian reform in 1988 would actually be allocated.

As far as a limited program, recent reports of the progress of the draft Executive order indicate that coverage, which in earlier drafts had applied to all farmlands in use, would not extend to coconut and sugarcane areas--that is, to roughly 30 percent of all agricultural lands. Such a provision would doubtless reduce resistance from landowners affected; but for the farmers, nothing would be solved.

It is common practice for coconut farmers to pay their landlords 70 percent of each harvest, a fact which helps to explain why there are 24,000 NPA in the field. The corrolation between perceived unfair land practices and military insurgency seems to be unmistakable. Given such a background, if the government of the Philippines wants to pursue--and achieve--a Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program worthy of the name. But with a Congress not predisposed to favor such a policy, and a president commited to the policy in theory but incapable of effecting its realization in practice, the prospect of such a necessary agrarian reform program coming to fruition seems remote.