Why a win-win outcome is unlikely: Sumilao (3)

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
   
3. 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.
4. 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.
   

DAR's gift to the Sumilao farmers on Human Rights Day (2)

The Department of Agrarian Reform celebrated Human Rights Day by betraying the human rights of the very farmers whose existence is its very reason for being. As the farmers prepared to go up to the offices of the DAR secretary, they were barred from entering the compound by about eight security guards, on orders of the secretary himself. . Minutes later police from Camp Karingal arrived to keep the peace, very likely the peace of mind of San Miguel Foods’ Danding Cojuangco and Ramon Ang, whose well-paid lawyers pleaded ignorance about the laws of the land they have so obviously violated. Where were the born-again stars in national politics?

How do I know all these? Simple, I was with the farmers from two in the afternoon up to almost eight in the evening. And why did I feel obliged to lend my support in body and not just mind? Never mind, but you can read the previous entry in this blog. I will not go into the chronology on the issue. If you are concerned, there’s enough material on the web. Among those are the essays of Winnie Monsod, who discussed the latest findings of Arsenio Balisacan, my professor almost 20 years ago in agricultural economics; and Joaquin Bernas, as my atheism does not bar me from admiring Jesuit scholarship. Here, I would rather discuss what has not been reported in the mainstream media, including the Philippine Daily Inquirer and ABS-CBN.

Earlier in the afternoon, the farmers and their leaders inside their talipapa camp just outside the gates of the DAR discussed the position paper the DAR secretary had asked them to submit by the end of Monday. They felt they really didn’t have to anymore as their positions and petitions were already known not only to the guards of DAR but also to the lizard population on the ceiling of Nasser Pangandaman’s well-appointed office. (Much as I would like to sympathize with Pangandaman who has been busy counting the white hair in his nose and daydreaming about Christmas lechon, he makes me want to go vegetarian). But they did, like lowly farmers who obey the laws of the land. Or wanted to. The rule of law? Whose law and whose rules?

At around five, the guards suddenly padlocked and chained the gates. Then a receiving clerk appeared and said she was authorized to accept the position paper.

“Why don’t you relocate your office to the gates then?” the farmers asked. The clerk said those were her orders.

“Has San Miguel submitted its position paper?” lawyer Marlon Manuel asked the clerk. She didn’t know or would not say.

“Where is the secretary?” A few minutes later a young man who claimed he was from the secretariat explained to ‘Kaka,’ a coordinator for the farmers, “We don’t want any trouble.” “And neither do we,” Kaka said.

“Who gave the order to lock the gates?” I asked the guards. “We don’t know,” they replied.

After more than an hour, the farmers decided to cool off and celebrate mass with priests and nuns from Mindanao. At the risk of being excommunicated from my own congregation, I stayed. When I left before eight, it wasn’t clear whether the Sumilao farmers would be home for Christmas.

Notes:

· I was impressed by niece Charo Logarta who interviewed the leaders of the farmers in fluent Cebuano. Because I know my cousin (her dad) had left Cebu as a child, I assumed the daughter would know only English and Tagalog. I was wrong. Noel Cabangon came to sing a few songs in solidarity and I could not hold back tears. Someone let out air from the left rear tire of my car, but a farmer who also drives a jeepney in Bukidnon took care of it. There are Cebuano words which can’t be expressed in Tagalog or English: Pastilan! Intaon! Lechong baboy! Lecheng yawa! And that was exactly how I felt).

· It may very well be that the San Miguel plan would be better for the economy overall, but this a question of social justice and law and not of gross domestic product. It’s not jiust the economy stupid! It’s human rights and justice. If our national life were to be dominated by just economic efficiency, we would reopen the debate about democracy,dictatorship and development. Nyet! But more on this in the next post.

The rights of the Sumilao farmers (1)

Among the strange coincidences in my long life are that in some way I had been associated with the anti-heroes in the struggle of the Sumilao farmers for land:

1. After graduation (chemical engineering) in 1980, I was appointed executive assistant to the president of the Norkis Group of Companies, a certain Norberto Quisumbing Jr.
2. About a year later, a certain Ruben Torres interviewed me for a job in the Ministry of Energy.
3. In 1993, I was asked to comment on proposals in the Senate to make agrarian reformed lands fungible by a senator considered close to Fidel Ramos.

Last Friday I paid the farmers camped in front of the Department of Agrarian Reform a brief visit. I hope to be able to converse with them again today. They have my undying support.