CA rejects Mariano as DAR chief
MANILA — The Commission on Appointments has rejected the ad interim appointment of Agrarian Reform Secretary Rafael Mariano, an activist farmer whom representatives of landlords have accused of abusing his authority.
On Tuesday, representatives of Cojuangco-owned Hacienda Luisita accused Mariano of favoring farmers with Alyansa ng mga Manggagawang Bukid sa Asyenda Luisita, a group affiliated with the Kilusang Mambubukid ng Pilipinas. Mariano, a former Anakpawis partylist representative, is also former chairman of KMP.
Mariano has denied favoring any farmers' groups.
In July 2016, Mariano invalidated the “tambioloagraryo,” a lottery system that awarded lots to agrarian reform beneficiaries that KMP Secretary General Antonio Flores described in a 2016 report in a San Fernando, Pampanga based Punto! Central Luzon as “ridiculously noncontiguous.”
The distance between lots, KMP said, was meant to keep farmer beneficiaries apart, “displace the farm workers and divide their ranks.” The group said this made farmer-beneficiaries more prone to the “aryendo” system, where farmers allegedly lease back lands they already own.
In April 2017, DAR cancelled the sale and leasing out of Hacienda Luisita farm lots under the aryendo system.
He said the department found “that local politicians, utilizing an illicit leaseback system known as ‘aryendo,’ have duped thousands of cash-strapped agrarian reform beneficiaries of Hacienda Luisita into letting go of farm lots already awarded to them.” This was illegal since Certificates of Land Ownership Award specify that land cannot be sold or leased out within 10 years of the award.
In a DAR release, Mariano said his work has been in “rectifying the policy mistakes of the old DAR to begin the process of implementing genuine agrarian reform in the first 100 days of the Duterte administration.”
In May of this year, DAR helped install 159 farmers with the Madaum Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries Association Inc. (MARBAI) at the 145-hectare San Isidro (Sanid) farm area inside the former Hijo Plantation in Tagum, Davao del Norte.
The agrarian-reform beneficiaries had tried twice before to install — or take control of land already awarded to them — in April but had been turned away by Lapanday Food Corp., which disputes the beneficiaries’ ownership of the land.
DAR said the previous attempts were “opposed by LFC owners with the help of their armed goons and the failure of the Region XI local police to come up with operational plan to execute the writ of installation.”
Manolito Dagatan and Hernani Geronimo of Lapanday Foods Corp. are among those opposing Mariano’s confirmation. They said Mariano is not fit to be Agrarian Reform secretary and have said he has ties to the New People’s Army, which attacked LFC plants in Davao in April.
Mariano has denied these links and his supporters have said that implying the secretary has links to the NPA is a form of “red tagging,” a practice which has put many activists in danger.
Ranch owners in Nueva Ecija have also accused Mariano of “inciting and supporting the illegal, armed, forced entry of more than 250 men with bolos, machetes, and samurai swords” in October 2016. Although the group involved was the KMP, Mariano said he had no personal involvement in the incident.
According to data Philstar.com requested from the DAR, a total of 22,085 farmers were given CLOAs between July 2016 and March 2017, with more recent field reports yet to be validated as of the data release. That accounts for 21,088 hectares of land distributed in the first nine months that Mariano was Agrarian Reform secretary.
In contrast, according to the same DAR data release, it distributed land to 30,107 ARBs in 2015. It must be noted, however, that then Agrarian Secretary Gel de los Reyes did not have to deal with the transition period that a new appointee needs to contend with.