Mrs. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has agreed to meet with the Sumilao farmers on Monday, after the agrarian reform secretary issued his earth-shaking decision: status quo! What's on Mrs. Arroyo's mind? I asked the spouse of a cabinet secretary. Nothing really. She just wants to listen, or to appear to listen. What should we advise the farmers? Go to Malacanang and have merienda, it is their right, after all that's supposed to be the hall of the people.
But is a win-win outcome possible? Yes, but highly improbable. Based on the legal briefs I've studied, the land rightly belongs to the farmers. If San Miguel Foods claims that it can put the land to much better use, and for the benefit of not just the Mapalad farmers to boot, then it should first make a decent proposal to compensate the farmers for the land, to include the foregone income for the past 10 years or so. Instead, it has evidently chosen the tack of divide and rule, dangling the prospect of income for the non-claimant farmers in Sumilao, after probably having bribed the governor and father of this dubious character in the senate, who is full of crap about biofuels blah blah blah and advocating without understanding, and Sumilao town officials. This much was evident to me when the San Miguel Foods cabal, including Jess Arranza of the Federation of Philippine Industries appeared in Korina Sanchez's show last Wednesday. She was apparently not well-prepared and did not ask the right questions of the farmers who were on the show earlier.
I'm not an advocate of national food security because I believe millions more Filipino consumers deserve the best prices for staple and other food. Agrarian reform is a means for asset redistribution and not to tie farmers to the land forever. What they want to do with the land is up to them. The greater and more realistic aspiration is income stability, security, and mobility. I am not sentimental about land, but if the farmers are, that is their right.
Notes:
- I don't really know what the liability of Norberto Quisumbing Jr., whom I worked for in the 1980's, is. I hear from Cebu that he's busy trying to leave a legacy, and has just sued a columnist for The Philippine Star.
- After having been barred from entering the compound to deliver their position paper last Monday, the farmers relented and had it received at the gate. Such law-abiding and humble citizens in contrast to the officials of San Miguel Foods. Yesterday, all they could do was stage a sit-down strike and noise barrage against the status quo order, which is not a good idea; they'd only ruin their eardrums and get 'kubal' on their 'lubot.' A better idea is to stalk Nasser Pangandaman and invade the privacy of his home.
- In my visits to the Soviet Union and the East Bloc in the 1980's petty or small-holder farmers were looked down on with great suspicion as lacking in revolutionary spirit in contrast to the real proletariat. I have since then taken a more liberal view.
- I've got nothing against Korina Sanchez. In fact, I really like her program, especially when she's absent and Pia Hontiveros or Twink Macaraig or Pinky Webb sub for her.
