Grenade blast hits DAR’s Negros office

BACOLOD CITY – A grenade blast hit the Negros Occidental office of the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) here at around 1:50 a.m. yesterday while a group of farmer-beneficiaries were camping outside the compound.

Provincial agrarian reform officer Teresita Depenoso said nobody was hurt in the blast, which damaged windows and a portion of the gate.

Police Station 1 chief Noel Manaay said investigators found a safety lever, pin and shrapnel at the scene of the explosion.

The farmers who were camping out said they saw two men on board a red motorcycle hurling something at the compound before the blast. They failed to identify them as towels covered their faces, Manaay said.

Depenoso, who has stayed in the compound since her transfer from Siquijor last year, said they got reports that groups opposed to the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) have hired people to harass and threaten DAR personnel.

Police units were promptly deployed to the DAR compound following the blast, Manaay said.

The incident happened several hours prior to the scheduled installation of farmers at Hacienda Carmen Chika in Pontevedra town. The landholding is owned by the family of the late Ambassador Roberto Benedicto.

Depenoso met with Pontevedra Mayor Jose Maria Alonso at the town hall yesterday to seek intervention following strong resistance from the members of the Workers Amalgamated Union of the Philippines (WAUP), which is allied with the hacienda’s management.

The workers set up barricades along the highway leading to the property to prevent DAR personnel from entering.

Depenoso was bent on entering the hacienda but was prevented by Alonso who insisted that it would only result in violence, saying that tension was still high and the workers would resist no matter what the outcome would be.

Alonso was formerly the farm administrator of Hacienda Esperanza, also owned by the Benedictos.

The mayor said it would be self-serving on his part to intervene in the case of Hacienda Carmen Chika since his brother, Edgardo, is the farm manager. Instead, he offered to facilitate a dialogue at the town hall today.

“We can settle this peacefully through dialogue. There is no use for DAR (personnel) to force themselves into the property because the workers are very emotional. Even I am emotional because these people were once my workers, too, and I know their sentiments,” he said.

Agrarian Reform Secretary Nasser Pangandaman, who called during the meeting between Depenoso and Alonso, accepted the mayor’s offer for a dialogue.

The conflict at Hacienda Carmen Chika started when 32 WAUP members bolted the union and demanded that they be awarded lots separately. However, the DAR needs to segregate the property before it can cancel the old CLOAs (certificates of land ownership award) and issue new ones.

For almost five years, 301 farmer-beneficiaries have been co-existing at the hacienda following the signing of a memorandum of agreement in 2003 placing the property under CARP through compulsory acquisition.

The MOA’s signatories were Kitchie Benedicto-Paulino, the DAR, 17 agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs) affiliated with Task Force Mapalad, 17 farmer-members of the Ugnayan ng Mangu­nguma sa Negros, 252 farmer-members of WAUP, and other beneficiaries not affiliated with any group.

Under the agreement, each group was given a collective CLOA.

However, the 32 farmers who broke away from WAUP, led by Wilbur Onas, demanded separate CLOAs as they rejected the three-year leaseback agreement entered into by their union with the landowner.

Farm manager Edgardo Alonso, meanwhile, blamed the DAR for its failure to implement the provisions of the MOA, claiming that it failed to conduct a final survey of the area, after which lots could be raffled off to all the beneficiaries.

Depenoso, however, claimed that they could not complete the survey since the hacienda’s management had refused them entry and did not attend the dialogue which her office had called.

Alonso said the DAR was not transparent with its intentions.

In yesterday’s meeting, Depenoso repeatedly claimed that they would enter the property only to conduct the delineation survey and would not install any ARBs.

Police Mobile Group director Celestino Guarra, however, refuted Depenoso’s claim, saying that the DAR’s request was for the police to secure the area for installation and cultivation.

However, he said they were instructed by provincial police director Rosendo Franco to withdraw from the area if there was strong resistance from the farmers.