New development models needed to reduce poverty in rural areas

Gemma Rita R. Marin, Philippine Daily Inquirer/Asia News Network, Manila

The political crisis is reeling into its fifth month. Sadly, there seems to be no clear route to its end.

Influential and supposedly well-meaning groups or individuals have suggested some solutions out of this rut. But with every proposition, the situation only becomes more complicated.

The ultimate and unwilling victim in this kind of predicament are the ordinary Filipinos who must have undergone a schizophrenic, roller-coaster ride of emotions in the last five months.

First, it was anger mixed with exasperation. Why the need to put up with a President who spoke to a Comelec official at the height of the elections, and yet remains adamant about staying in the presidency after admitting her "lapse in judgment"?

After the confusion comes disillusionment. Rightist elements mingle with the left and vice versa. Politicians jump from one party to another, from the majority bloc to the minority, and back to the majority.

Administration people suddenly belong to the opposition, or the other way around, then decide to become independent.

Still, one cannot help but become cynical at times. When a former top official suggests a process for resolving the crisis, is he eyeing a government position or, perhaps, the highest office of the land?

When a loser in the elections comes up with an expos? Is the noise just sour grapes or is he simply wanting attention?

When a congressman makes a turnaround on his stand accepting or rejecting the report of the House justice committee on the impeachment issue, does it mean he got paid or he was summoned to remember previous debts?

It is not hard to understand why Filipinos become resigned to their plight when all possible means to ferret out the truth are exhausted, but to no avail. Feeling themselves caught in a seemingly hopeless situation, they would rather implore the help of the Almighty.

Landlessness in the countryside remains pervasive, and poverty among small farmers is still widespread.

The 10-year period for the implementation of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Programme (CARP), which was supposed to end in 1998, was extended; and to this day CARP has yet to see completion.

Based on the records of the Department of Agrarian Reform, 3.5 million hectares or 82 per cent of the 4.3 million hectares covered by CARP have been distributed as of Dec 31, 2004.

This report is based on the number of Emancipation Patents (EPs) and Certificates of Land Ownership Award (CLOAs) issued, not on the actual number of beneficiaries the programme has physically installed on the lands that have been purportedly awarded.

Reports also reveal that the accomplishments in land acquisition and distribution are merely "paper victories," given the many EP/CLOA cancellations and the delaying tactics and non- cooperation of some landowners.

In a recent policy forum on agrarian reform that I attended, a staff from the NGO-Kaisahan, representing 312 farmer- beneficiaries (FBs) based in two barangays (villages) in Calatagan, Batangas, could not contain her anger and frustration over DAR's disorderly processes and lack of transparency in cancelling EPs.

The farmers were awarded EPs on the Ascue property in 1989, only to find out that the same piece of land had been sold to Asturias Chemical Industries, which got another title in 1994, or five years after the land was awarded to them.

Consolidated cases were filed and won by the FBs in 1998. Four years after, the Provincial Agrarian Reform Adjudicatory Board overturned the decision, declaring the property as mineral land, and rendering the EPs/CLOAs null and void.

The farmers protested but their complaint has yet to be addressed. The farmers had been paying for the land, which they might not get to own, for more than 10 years.

There are about 17 existing laws that provide a policy framework for land use. Most common among these are the CARP of 1988, the Indigenous People's Rights Act (Ipra) of 1997, the Local Government Code of 1991, the National Integrated Protected Areas System (Nipas) of 1992, the Philippine Fisheries Code of 1998 and the Philippine Mining Act of 1995.

In the end, these laws failed: to set the priorities for land use; to ensure that majority of the affected sectors would be benefited; and to put premium on long-term sustainability, local productive capacity and overall social equity.

A draft National Land Use Act (NLUA), filed during the 9th Congress, remains until today a draft in the House of Representatives, with no version yet from the concerned Senate Committee.

On the matter of access to credit, hefty amounts from local and foreign sources have been poured into microfinance lending for the poor.

Whether formal financial institutions indeed allocate the funds for the use of the poor is very much in doubt. The high risks and huge costs of transactions that go with microfinance lending have served to discourage many rural banks and other formal institutions from expanding their exposure beyond 30 per cent of their portfolio.

All sorts of lobbying and mobilisation have been resorted to for asset redistribution and greater social equity and productivity among the rural poor.

But structural obstacles practically confront the lowly farmers and small stakeholders all the way from production to marketing.

These obstacles -- market monopolies, meager budgets and low level of investments in infrastructure and support facilities, bureaucratic "red tape," and stiff competition induced by globalisation, among others -- have left these people with no choice but to put up with these dire realities.

There must be some other recourse. There ought to be alternatives for the rural poor. New models are being developed and tested.

But these alternative structures and approaches should now be put in place and, more importantly, should work to narrow down the social and economic divide in the countryside.