Church leaders confident on passage of CARP

MANILA, Philippines - Catholic Church leaders are confident that Congress would pass the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program Extension with Reforms (CARPer) after President Arroyo expressed support for the bill.

Manila Archbishop Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales told Radio Veritas that Church representatives together with peasant groups would still form a committee that would conduct dialogues with the leaders of the Senate and House to press for passage of the bill.

Fr. Anton Pascual, executive director of Caritas Manila, however, said that while Mrs. Arroyo supports the Church and the farmers in pushing for the bill the initiative to extend CARP remains with Congress, where the proposals to extend the program are still pending.

“We are confident that President Arroyo’s support for the passage of the CARPer would do a lot in achieving farmers’ victory,” Pascual said.

“The President supports the farmers in their fight to have a true land reform program but it’s up to Congress to enact the CARPer,” Pascual said.

Pascual also considered last week’s meeting of Church leaders led by Rosales and Cebu Archbishop Ricardo Cardinal Vidal with Mrs. Arroyo at Malacañang as “successful.”

“The dialogue between the three was successful as President Arroyo vowed to Cardinal Rosales and Cardinal Vidal that her administration will be a partner of the Church in pushing for the passage of Senate Bill 2666 and House Bill 4077. As President Arroyo promised, Malacañang is not the problem, the Church has the full support of the President,” Pascual said in Filipino.

The priest said that Malacañang would schedule a dialogue between the leaders of the Church and Congress.

Pascual said he and former Commission on Elections commissioner Christian Monsod would meet with Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile and House Speaker Prospero Nograles to discuss the legislation of the bill.

Monsod would be representing Rosales in the dialogue as the latter is set to leave for Rome, Pascual said.

Pascual also appealed to the public to convince their representatives to support the bill.

Pascual said they are drafting a letter of Rosales asking Mrs. Arroyo to hold a top-level dialogue to discuss CARPer.

“We need to advocate now with senators and congressmen to put moral pressure. We also need personal call from bishops to their respective legislators to pass CARPer. We have three months to turn the tide to CARPer favor,” he said.

The CARP ended last December with Congress failing to pass the bill that could have extended the program for another five years.

In order to keep the program running while Congress works on the passage of the bill, a joint resolution was passed in December extending the coverage of CARP for another six months.

However, the authors of the CARP extension bill, as well as the farmer stakeholders, criticized the joint resolution for not including a provision on compulsory land acquisition and distribution (LAD), which they said “is the heart and soul of the CARP.”

Mrs. Arroyo did not sign the joint resolution and allowed it to lapse into law.