Estrada pardon stirs some Negrenses

Well, the pardon of former President Joseph Estrada by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo created a minor stir among Negrenses, but it was mostly confined to the intellectual elite and the middle class. Otherwise, the majority had their eyes focused on more mundane matters such as the small town lottery.

The most strident opposition to the pardon came from leaders of groups in Negros Occidental and Iloilo City who call themselves the No-Erap Movement in Negros, led by lawyer Andy Hagad.

Kristin Trenas, leader of the Estrada Resign Movement in Iloilo, pointed out: “What gives a person, though elected, the right to help himself to the money of the people for his whim and caprices while the people languish in poverty? Now, he wants us to have the conscience to pardon him.”

For Hagad, however, the point is: “What kind of lesson are we going to teach our future presidents? That they can get away with crime?”

In short, Hagad said that while we have been waiting long for a big fish to be punished, “now that we have the biggest fish of all, we let him go.”

A more militant reaction came from lawyer Mildred Aguilar-Pfleider. She was one of the former private prosecutors in Estrada’s case.

Pfleider and other private prosecutors issued a “No to Pardon” manifesto.

“We are united in opposing in the strongest possible terms any grant of pardon to a person who has shamelessly betrayed the public trust and who remains unrepentant to this day,” the manifesto stated.

But Erap had his defenders in the province. Former Valladolid mayor Ricardo Presbitero stressed: “We, leaders of the Puwersa ng Masang Pilipino in Negros, are jubilant and happy over the release of President Estrada through executive clemency.”

“We give credit to the glory of God for this gift of freedom and the opportunity for genuine reconciliation so that everyone can now work together to uplift the lives of our poor people. For President Estrada’s detractors, we will pray harder that they may learn to forgive and love more,” he added.

The timing of the Erap pardon, however, may have been just right. People were mostly concentrating their attention on the torrid barangay electoral contests.

In the face of hotly contested local fights, nobody seems to have taken time out to consider the implications of a presidential pardon.

C’est la vie. But one can be sure that the furor will grow bigger in the next few days, assuming that the people really devote time to mull its implications rather than focus on where to get the next day’s meals.

Debate over CARP

It was unexpected – the vicious attack against the full-page advertisements in Metro Manila dailies by the Metro Bacolod Chamber of Commerce Inc. (MBCCI) of Negros on their findings on CARP based on the results of the Visayas Area Business Conference sponsored by the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry recently.

The ad called for a progressive Agrarian Reform Initiative for Agricultural and Economic Empowerment.

What both agencies called for was a moratorium on the implementation of the contentious aspects of CARP procedures by a mutual agreement among the implementing agencies.

In short, a suspension of land distribution and concentration of resources on support services for agrarian reform beneficiaries. The ad cited the findings of the German Economic Cooperation (GTZ)-Department of Agrarian Reform and the survey of the provincial government which showed anomalies and failures of the implementation of CARP in Negros Occidental.

MBCCI executive director Jose Maria Zayco explained that they “are not for the scrapping of CARP.”

“We are after a serious review. Something went wrong over the last 34 years. It is a wise decision to stop and  review. Clearly a review is not sabotage… Our position is that we have to seriously bother with going into the nitty-gritty of reviewing the billions of money and man-hours poured into CARP with no prosperity results,” was how Zayco defended the MBCCI after the Task Force Mapalad pilloried it as advocating against the extension of CARP.

In the provincial survey, a detailed study, it was found out that 41 percent or 111,752 agrarian reform beneficiaries in the province are no longer tilling the lands awarded to them by the DAR.

Negros Occidental Gov. Joseph Marañon tossed back to Task Force Mapalad the CARP sabotage charge.

MBCCI chairman Roberto Montelibano earlier pointed out that the body was for the review of CARP to address the lapses and defects of the law.

Marañon pointed out that he is with MBCCI if their moves are within the procedures and within the law, in the same manner that the province is doing it.

The TFM, he added, does not properly implement the law.

But what alarmed local groups was the demand by the Pambansang Kilusang Mamamalakaya ng Pilipinas (National Movement of Fishers of the Philippines) that the agricultural lands of the country be subjected to automatic expropriation without compensation.

It also demanded the condonation of all unpaid amortizations of the CLOA (certificate of land ownership award) holders to the Landbank and free distribution of lands to the tillers.

In short, the condition alone could amount to some P360 billion, which the government will have to pay the Landbank. Another militant group also advocated the abrogation of the Supreme Court ruling upholding the constitutionality of the scheme by businessman Eduardo Cojuangco in Isabela and Tarlac.

Well, the militant pro-CARP organizations keep up their blitz against the MBCCI. The latter group, however, believes that their appeal for a sober review of the CARP implementation will rouse leaders of Congress to really undertake a thorough study of the situation based on facts and figures, including the findings of GTZ.