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Occasional Paper No. 12
April 1999
by Jennifer C. Franco, Ph.D.
BETWEEN UNCRITICAL COLLABORATIONAND OUTRIGHT OPPOSITION :
ANEVALUATIVEREPORTONTHE
PARTNERSHIP FORAGRARIAN REFORMAND RURAL
DEVELOPMENTSERVICES (PARRDS)
ANDTHESTRUGGLEFORAGRARIANREFORM
ANDRURALDEVELOPMENT INTHE1960S
INSTITUTE FORPOPULARD E M O C R A C Y
WORKPROGRESS
N
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INSTITUTE FOR POPULAR DEMOCRACY 1
WORK IN PROGRESS
Between Uncritical Collaboration and Outright Opposition
By Jennifer C. Franco, Ph.D.
Between Uncritical Collaboration and Outright Opposition:An Evaluative Report on the Partnership for Agrarian Reform and RuralDevelopment Services (PARRDS) and the Strugglefor Agrarian Reform
and Rural Development in the 1960s*
WORK IN PROGRESS
Introduction: Historical Context and
Background
Despite numerous pieces of legislation on agrar-
ian reform in this century, the Philippines still had
a highly inequitable distribution of land owner-ship going into the 1990s. As late as 1988, ac-
cording to government land registration records,
not more than five percent of all landowners owned
83 percent of the countrys total farmlands. This
inequitable distribution, the highest rate in Asia,
persisted mainly because of the failure of govern-
ment agrarian reform programs in the past to deal
with the underlying problem of widespread land-
lessness and near-landlessness. Past government
programs emphasized resettlement, rather than
actual redistribution, while the central government
usually responded with repression and mere
promises to pressures from below for reform. Past
government failures to implement land reform
effectively and democratically one of the basic
building blocks for rural democratization and ru-
ral development - meant that toward the 1990s
achievement of full and meaningful agrarian re-
form remained a central concern for many poor
peasant communities, farm workers and pro-re-
form support groups.
Looking back at the past decade, one finds that
agrarian reform in the Philippines had arrived at a
new political impasse with the passage in June
1988 of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform
Law (CARL) and its related program, the Com-
prehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP).
This impasse was initially characterized by very
weak political support for the redistributive as-
pect of the program, both in society and within
the state. On the side of the state, the first leader-
ship under CARP at the Department of Agrarian
Reform (DAR) was eventually implicated in sev-eral land scandals, while the third DAR appoin-
tee, a pro-reform advocate, was blocked from tak-
ing office by anti-reformists in Congress. At the
same time, red scare tactics set limits on the
maneuverability of the pro-reformists initially
within the DAR bureaucracy, many of whom
were eventually eased out of the department. On
the society side, the most active groups on the
agrarian reform scene who had tried to influence
the Congressional debate on the content of the
program, ended up rejecting the law that waseventually passed as irrevocably pro-landlord.
After that, at least initially, there was little room
on the broad left of the political spectrum for se-
rious consideration of the CARPs redistributive
potentials, mainly because of the perceived need
to project other, presumably more pro-peasant
programs (PARCODE or agrarian revolution) in-
stead.
Then the early 1990s brought about a series ofevents that altered the political dynamics around
agrarian reform, setting the stage for the emer-
gence of the Philippine Partnership for Agrarian
Reform and Rural Development Services
(PARRDS), in March 1994. 1 The first event was
the coming to power of the Ramos administra-
tion in 1992. Under Ramos, the national govern-
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Between Uncritical Collaboration and Outright Opposition
ment began to make a clearer push toward
neoliberalism, as seen in its neoliberal-inspired
Philippines 2000 program. But the Ramos presi-dency also made some surprising moves, particu-
larly with regard to agrarian reform. One of
Ramoss campaign promises, directed at anti-re-
formists, had been that he would raise the reten-
tion limit within CARP from five to 50 hectares.
But the new President quickly brought in Ernesto
Garilao, former executive director of the Philip-
pine Business for Social Progress (PBSP), to head
the DAR. In turn, Garilao was able to convince
Ramos to drop his promise of raising the reten-
tion limit under CARP. This move, the earliestindication that the new DAR secretary intended
to defend the integrity of CARP as constituted,
immediately set him apart from his predecessors.
But Garilao did not stop there:
In addition, [he] brought several respected NGO
activists into the DAR and gave them key posi-
tions, and then proceeded to launch a clean-up
operation inside the bureaucracy. His other major
step was to informal consultations immediately
with members of the NGO community, to the
surprise of many. He later instituted both formal
and informal consultative groups involving vari-
ous autonomous peasant organizations and
NGOs. 2
Ramoss election thus created a more complex po-
litical challenge for groups on the left of the broad
political spectrum concerned with agrarian reform
and rural development (ARRD) issues. This chal-
lenge was rooted in the relatively greater atten-tion paid by the Ramos administration to the po-
litical legitimacy functions of the central state,
compared to previous administrations. 3 Concern
for political legitimacy, whatever the actual inten-
tions behind it, ended up increasing the political
space available for CARP implementation than
had previously existed, creating new opportuni-
ties for ARRD advocates willing to engage gov-
ernment.
At the same time, Ramoss election had a power-
ful disorganizing effect on civil society as or-
ganized groups on the broad left struggled to
come to terms with how to position themselves
vis--vis the new administration. In particular,
Ramoss election heightened the historical divi-
sion within the broad left between social demo-
crats (SDs) and national democrats (NDs), as their
two diametrically opposed political poles gained
prominence. The social democratic network of
organizations took the lead in occupying what hasbeen dubbed the uncritical collaboration pole,
while the national democratic network assumed
leadership of the outright opposition pole. Signs
of the impending rift within the broad left had
emerged as early as the 1992 campaign, when the
Congress for a Peoples Agrarian Reform (CPAR)
was unable to unite behind a single presidential
candidate. While part of CPARs membership
went with the Ramos campaign despite the
candidates promise to raise the retention limit un-
der CARP, another part went with Jovito Salonga.
After the election, deep disagreement within the
CPAR over how to view the new administration
plagued the coalition, and the inability to move
past this internal political impasse among other
problems, helped to precipitate the collapse of the
coalition in late 1993.
The second event therefore that set the stage for
the emergence of PARRDS was the collapse of
the CPAR. The CPAR had previously gainedprominence as the longest-running coalition in the
post-Marcos period, but it is probably no coinci-
dence that the countrys model coalition had
risen from the peasant and peasant-support sec-
tor. A confluence of events had worked to put
agrarian reform at the top of the national agenda
during Corazon Aquinos first 18 months in of-
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fice. The collapse of the Marcos dictatorship in
1986 had raised expectations that a new agrarian
reform law would be enacted by the peoplepower administration. But government foot-
dragging, combined with landlord resistance dur-
ing the early part of the Aquino administration,
meant that enactment of a pro-peasant agrarian
reform law would be neither automatic nor nec-
essarily democratic. The Mendiola massacre had
helped to drive this point home more broadly. This
realization eventually led to the birth of the CPAR
on May 31, 1987. Though too late to play a role
in expanding the number of pro-reform represen-
tatives in the national legislature, the CPAR soonbecame the main advocacy vehicle for proponents
of significant reform to influence the land reform
debate in the first post-Marcos Congress. Along
with the independent efforts of some member or-
ganizations, the CPAR went on to play a key role
in keeping agrarian reform on the national agenda
and in proposing an alternative pro-peasant pro-
gram, the PARCODE. Its efforts contributed to
the eventual passage of CARL and the inaugura-
tion of CARP, even though CPAR itself rejected
them as anti-peasant.
But the CPAR proved unable to effectively me-
diate the differences in political strategy vis--vis
the Ramos administration that existed between its
different member organizations. Though the de-
mise of the CPAR had been under way for some
time, its collapse still created a hole in the ARRD
political landscape. Most of the groups that later
came together as PARRDS had also been part of
the CPAR. In explaining the new organizationsorigins, the PARRDS literature suggests that the
collapse of the CPAR created a vacuum mainly
in terms of national agrarian reform advocacy. But
it also closed down formal venues and channels
previously used by different organizations within
the coalition to relate with each other. Like any
other organization, the CPAR had served a dual
function as an actor in the larger political arena
and as an institutional context within which other
(smaller) organizational actors interacted, engaged,fought each other, and got to know each other
better. Both dimensions of the CPAR evaporated
when the coalition closed down. As a result, two
kinds of gaps were left on the ARRD political
landscape: one in terms of key national AR advo-
cacy actors, the other in terms of a stable, predict-
able institutional context within which individual
AR organizational actors could formally relate
with each other.
The third and final event that altered the ARRDpolitical-institutional context and gave a push to
the emergence of PARRDS was the split in 1993
within the Communist Party of the Philippines -
New Peoples ArmyNational Democratic Front
(CPP-NPA-NDF) and its constellation of above-
ground organizational forces. The factors and
dynamics surrounding the breakup of the national
democratic movement are certainly beyond the
scope of this report. But it can be said that the
1993 split gave a push to, or at least helped to
create, positive conditions for the formation of
PARRDS in at least two ways. First, it unleashed
ARRD forces that had already begun to question
the party leaderships outright rejection policy
vis--vis the Philippine government, at least in
terms of agrarian reform, but until then had been
constrained in their political actions and relation-
ships by the CPP leadership, structures and rules,
and internal dynamics. The split unleashed these
political forces and made them free agents, so
to speak, available for new endeavors such asPARRDS. Second, the CPP split in 1993 also
opened up new political space for, and increased
the political currency of, other non-CPP-related
groups also interested in pursuing a more sophis-
ticated approach to CARP than the leadership of
either of the two prevailing main political move-
ments could offer.
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Birth of a New ARRD Political Strategy
While the inauguration of the Ramos administra-tion introduced a more complex political challenge
to ARRD advocacy, the collapse of the CPAR
and the CPP split showed the need for new politi-
cal strategies and organizational approaches to deal
with this challenge. Proponents of the PARRDS
project thus viewed it as one that would take up
the challenge of steering the difficult, unplowed
course between the two main contending politi-
cal poles vis-a-vis the Ramos administration. These
were characterized as uncritical collaboration
on the one hand and outright opposition on theother. The PARRDS convenors aimed for a more
careful reading of the Ramos project, which they
viewed as neither the key to economic salvation
nor a mere propaganda ploy (PARRDS Strat-
egy and Program for ARRD, July 1994). As one
convenor put it, PARRDS cannot be reduced to
collaboration/support to the Ramos government
nor into all-out opposition to it. PARRDS will
develop an independent yet critical stance towards
government and at the same time maximize pos-
sibilities, including principled partnership with
reform elements in government (Board Meeting
Minutes, March 30, 1994). This new kind of po-
sitioning was most clearly articulated vis-a-vis
CARP. PARRDS will try to balance between a
critique of CARP [on the one hand], while maxi-
mizing possibilities within this legal framework
on the other (ibid.). This potentially tricky bal-
ancing act in turn required a multifaceted ap-
proach combining debate, dialogue and nego-
tiation, with creating.
To the PARRDS convenors, debate meant cri-
tiquing the flaws in the government development
framework and even coming out with a compre-
hensive critique of the Ramos program based on
a thorough study of the latter. Dialogue meant
engaging key government offices and personnel
in activities that could reformulate governments
development agenda to expand its social reform
agenda and opening lines with policy research-
ers and planners of government and influencingthe direction of their work through constant inter-
action. Negotiation meant working for conces-
sions from government which could advance the
development project of the popular movement,
using both pressure politics and moral persua-
sion on government officials tasked with imple-
menting Ramoss programs. Finally, the
convenors of PARRDS emphasized the need to
create as well. This meant going beyond both criti-
cism and proposition, toward actually demon-
strating the desirability and viability of the devel-opment framework of the popular movement
through community-based initiatives. This last
approach also implied local coalition-building
since it was felt that [t]he popular movement
needs to find ways to pool resources to demon-
strate its frameworks superiority at a scale which
will have an impact on the national development
debate.
Armed with this new combined approach,
PARRDS set out to establish itself as the main
anchor within civil society of a new, alternative
pluralist position on agrarian reform (AR) and
rural development (RD) concerns. As a new coa-
lition initiative, PARRDS viewed itself as distinct
from its precursor, the CPAR in four basic ways,
each of which was reformulated as one element
of the organizations overall work program. First,
the PARRDS convenors emphasized the need for
a progressive pole capable of taking on both
AR and RD concerns, though it is not clear fromthe PARRDS literature exactly why integrating
the twin targets of agrarian reform and rural de-
velopment was considered important. What the
literature does make clear is that in the Philippines
historically, most NGOs and POs engaged in
agrarian reform failed to address rural develop-
ment, while those engaged in rural development
tended to downplay land tenure improvement
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(LTI) and other AR issues (Board Meeting Min-
utes, March 30, 1994). With its strong emphasis
on AR concerns, the CPAR was viewed as hav-ing failed to give adequate attention to RD con-
cerns (ibid.). Whatever the exact reasoning be-
hind it, integration of AR and RD work was put
forward as a major element of the new coalitions
work program, and key issues/indicators for
each of the two dimensions were identified. For
AR, key issues/indicators were identified as land
tenure improvement (LTI), land conversion/land
use and agricultural monopolies, while those iden-
tified for RD were increased production/income,
chemical/capital intensity and integrated area de-velopment.
Second, in contrast to the CPAR experience,
PARRDS aimed to cultivate synergy between
peasant organizations or POs, NGOs and politi-
cal blocs. The CPAR had been founded as a coa-
lition of national peasant federations, supported
by NGO partners. The national PO federation
leaders had been envisioned to play the decisive
role in the coalitions internal decision-making
processes, but in reality NGO and political bloc
representatives usually made their presence keenly
felt in the day-to-day activities and overall direc-
tion of the coalition. This situation eventually be-
came a source of tension between different groups
within the CPAR. In contrast, NGOs and politi-
cal blocs would be admitted and officially recog-
nized as part of the PARRDS initiative, along-
side the POs. It was felt that institutionalizing the
presence and participation of the NGOs and po-
litical blocs would make their actual participationin the day-to-day activities and in shaping the
coalitions overall direction more transparent than
it had been with the CPAR. Partly to make par-
ticipation by the different types of member-com-
ponents more transparent, PARRDS convenors
decided to institutionalize separate caucuses for
Third, PARRDS was conceived as a coalition
working on two complementary levels national
and provincial. The CPAR had started out as anadvocacy coalition working at the national level,
and only later tried to evolve regional (interpro-
vincial) coalitions, with mixed results. The
PARRDS convernors believed that national ad-
vocacy should always be linked to a strong local
base, especially with regard to AR. Giving birth
to grassroots-level cooperation is one indicator that
a national-level coalition effort is successful. An
issue like AR will be fought not only in the halls
of Congress and Malacanang and the streets of
the metropolis, but also in the far-flung towns andvillages where landlessness is a lived experience.
With PARRDS, the focus of coalition-base-build-
ing was shifted from the regional to the provin-
cial level, partly because of the nature of AR imple-
mentation dynamics under Secretary Ernesto
Garilaos DAR in early 1994. Strong peasant
coalitions in the provinces are even more impor-
tant now that the DAR has announced that it will
distribute 600,000 hectares of land this year. Prov-
ince-level peasant coalitions can help ensure that
the DAR does not waver in its commitment, and
will continue to challenge the government to ex-
pand its AR program (ibid.). It seems that the
PARRDS convenors also felt that it was at the
provincial rather than the regional level that inter-
organizational cooperation was more natural and
more strategic in terms of potential rural develop-
ment alternatives taking root.
Fourth, unlike the CPAR, PARRDS would pro-
vide support services such as community organi-zation (CO) training, grassroots leadership forma-
tion and popular education to its local coalition
members, as part of the provincial coalitions base-
building agenda. An analysis of the CPAR expe-
rience had prompted the PARRDS convenors to
conceive the partnership as both an ARRD advo-
representatives of POs, NGOs and political blocs. cacy coalition and a support services center:
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One of the challenges facing PARRDS is the
need to strengthen its member-organizations be-
cause a strong membership base would also meana stronger coalition. A big stumbling block to
unity, as experienced by the CPAR, was a widely
noted quantitative and qualitative unevenness of
its member-organizations. Smaller federations, per-
haps in fear of getting drowned by much bigger
federations, tended to act too cautiously which
affected timely and prompt decision-making in the
coalition. On the other hand, big federations felt
that the smaller and oftentimes weaker federations
get most of the benefits of a united front effort.
PARRDS is aware that promoting the mutualgrowth of all its member-organizations will re-
dound to strong unity. One of the ways to do this
is to provide support to the respective community
organizing and training programs of its member-
organizations(ibid).
But rather than creating a coalition center or na-
tional secretariat that would provide such services,
PARRDS recognized and took seriously the train-
ing and education resources already available to
the coalition through the different member-orga-
nizations themselves, thus giving birth to the
counterparting system concept.
Finally, an additional insight from the CPAR ex-
perience in terms of organizational strategy influ-
enced the PARRDS convenors in the making of
the organizational design. One important lesson
was that mechanisms would have to be developed
to prevent the national secretariat from becoming
too powerful vis--vis the coalition itself. Thoughnecessary for any advocacy organization operat-
ing both at and beyond the national political cen-
ter, national secretariats tend to take off from
their base in the absence of organizational holds
on it. This is because national secretariats handle
the day-to-day operations, including communica-
tions between the coalition and other state and
societal actors, and often among different mem-
ber organizations as well. Secretariats often also
provide a stable public face and most visibleproof of a coalitions continuity over time. In the
absence of effective checks and balances, the coa-
lition and its member organizations, can end up
becoming unwitting hostages to decisions or ac-
tions made by national secretariats on their be-
half, especially when their operations are based
in local areas outside the national capital.
The PARRDS literature suggests that the CPAR
national secretariat had become detached from the
coalition and acquired too much decision makingpower relative to the coalition leaders, mainly be-
cause of its sheer weight in terms of number of
staff members. To avoid this problem, it was de-
cided that PARRDS would maintain a relatively
trimmed down national secretariat, and that one
way to do this would be to spread decision mak-
ing and other responsibilities to other areas of the
coalition. The most explicit effort to prevent the
national secretariat from becoming too big was
through the counterparting system. Here the sec-
retariat would merely facilitate or boost deliv-
ery of training and education services by one
member organization to another within the con-
text of the coalition, though the PARRDS litera-
ture does not clearly spell out how this would
happen. Meanwhile, other organizational struc-
tures were created which in theory could also serve
to keep the national secretariat in check, includ-
ing regular monthly board meetings and separate
NGO, PO and political bloc caucuses.
In sum, PARRDS was established as a vehicle
for plowing the difficult course between the two
main contending political poles vis-a-vis the
Ramos administration on agrarian reform and ru-
ral development. Meeting this challenge required
a multifaceted approach that could effectively
combine national debate, dialogue and negotia-
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tion around agrarian reform, with creating alter-
native rural development building blocks on the
ground. It also required a new coalition effort thatwould build on the gains made by the CPAR, but
also move beyond these by learning from its weak-
nesses.
PARRDS thus viewed itself as building on but
going beyond the CPAR in four basic ways. First,
it would engage in struggles for both full and
meaningful agrarian reform and sustainable and
equitable rural development by integrating both
kinds of targets into its work program. Second, it
would try to cultivate synergy around AR andRD issues between its different PO, NGO and
political bloc member organizations. Third, it
would work on both the national and the provin-
cial levels, since the actual struggle for AR and
RD takes place both in the national capital and on
the ground in local areas. Fourth, it would facili-
tate provision of support services, such as CO
training, grassroots leadership formation and
popular education to local coalition members, as
part of its provincial coalition base-building
agenda.
PARRDS would be both a coalition and a ser-
vice center. Its programs would focus on accom-
plishing specific agrarian reform and rural devel-
opment targets, and its main political strategy
would be to combine provincial coalition-build-
ing with national advocacy, negotiation and rep-
resentation. In support of this strategy, it would
provide CO training, grassroots leadership forma-
tion and popular education services to area-basedPOs and NGOs. Finally, while accomplishing all
this, PARRDS would maintain a small national
secretariat staff by spreading decision making and
other responsibilities to other areas of the coali-
tion structure. It would do this through the
counterparting system, institutionalized PO, NGO
and political bloc caucuses, and the maintenance
of a working board at the national level. This then
is how the PARRDS convenors conceived of
their ARRD project at the time of its founding.
How well has the PARRDS project worked over
the past four years (1994-present)? Based on our
present understanding of the ARRD challenges
to come, what changes, if any, should be made in
terms of its overall political strategy, programmatic
focus, or organizational structure? Before attempt-
ing to address these questions, it may be useful to
review briefly PARRDS activities over the past
four years. The next section of this report will pro-
vide an overview of PARRDS activities, includ-ing activities related to the maintenance of the
coalition itself. The discussion does not intend to
give an exhaustive account of PARRDS activi-
ties, since such information is available elsewhere.
Rather, the overview will provide the main his-
torical and political-institutional reference points
for the synthesis that follows of views expressed
by key informants during the primary data-gath-
ering phase of the evaluation.
Overview of PARRDS Activities,
1994-1997
1994: Breaking New Ground
PARRDS introduced itself publicly with the
Alyansang Magdiwang mobilization of 10,000
peasants at the DAR central office in Manila on
June 10, 1994, the sixth anniversary of CARP
and a day traditionally meant to heighten publicawareness of ongoing AR struggles. Similar mo-
bilizations were carried out in several provinces
outside the national capital, including Davao del
Norte, South Cotabato and Cebu. A PO leaders
forum was held as well. Focusing on six years of
CARP implementation, the forum helped give
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public projection to PARRDS and its new politi-
cal strategy vis--vis agrarian reform.
As the opening salvo of PARRDS, the June 10
mobilization was expected to accomplish several
things. It not only signaled the new coalitions ar-
rival on the ARRD scene, but also provided an
occasion to test its new political strategy of com-
bining criticism with maximization of opportu-
nities, using social pressure from below and
engagement with openings from above created
by state reformists. The DAR responded by act-
ing favorably on most of the specific AR cases
raised by the PARRDS forces. The coordinatedmobilizations both at the national political center
and in far-flung provinces also helped to lay the
groundwork for the launching of provincial coa-
lition initiatives in seven provinces (Bulacan,
Nueva Ecija, Pampanga, Cavite, Cebu, South
Cotabato and Davao del Norte). By the last quar-
ter of 1994, PARRDS provincial coalition-build-
ing initiatives were formalized, meaning lead
NGOs were identified and the first set of provin-
cial coalition-builders were deployed.
As part of its focus on rural development in gen-
eral and on food security issues in particular,
PARRDS also became a convenor of the World
Food Day Committee, a broad coalition formed
in mid-1994 to prepare activities around World
Food Day on October 16. The campaign culmi-
nated in a Rural Development Exposition and
Trade Fair (RDETF), a GATT (General Agree-
ment on Tariffs and Trade) discussion and work-
shop, and a dialogue with key government agen-cies (DAR and DA) where PO leaders were able
to engage government to respond to them on is-
sues and concerns confronting their organizations.
The effort was considered by PARRDS national
leaders to have been a relative success despite
weak media work, the limited participation of
PARRDS member organizations, and a low level
of preparedness for the dialogue with the DA. The
activity elicited positive coverage in the media and
enabled PARRDS to reach out to other groupsand institutions beyond the coalition. It also al-
lowed PARRDS to further develop discussions
about and highlight small-scale initiatives toward
viable rural development alternatives.
The World Food Day 1994 campaign was espe-
cially significant given an intensifying trend to-
ward trade globalization at that time under the
governments Medium-Term Philippine Develop-
ment Plan (MTADP) and GATT, which was then
up for ratification in the Philippine Senate.PARRDS became an active part of the broader
anti-GATT coalition, PabiGATT, which had been
formed to lobby against the passage of GATT.
1995: Setting New Terms of Engagement
By the beginning of 1995, anti-reformist initia-
tives to dilute CARP further were gaining ground
in Congress. In particular, bills were being con-
sidered proposing the exemption of fishponds,
prawn farms and commercial farms from agrar-
ian reform under CARP. These bills, if approved,
would remove a significant portion of private ag-
ricultural lands from CARP coverage. In response
to this anti-reform onslaught, PARRDS put to-
gether a broad ARRD front to spearhead civil
society opposition to the bill and to other such
dilution schemes under way in Congress.
Specifically, PARRDS was instrumental in the
formation on January 19, 1995 of the Movementto Oppose and Resist Exemptions from Agrarian
Reform (MORE-AR), which launched an inten-
sive and extensive month-long campaign. The
MORE-AR campaign was marked by sustained
media work, where the pro-reform position on
exemptions was highlighted through a series of
press releases, press conferences and radio-hop-
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ping. The MORE-AR coalition spearheaded
other forms of social mobilization throughout the
campaign, including lobbying in Congress, dia-logues and negotiation with key Cabinet mem-
bers, and picketing at Malacaang and the Sen-
ate. In the end, the proposal to exempt commer-
cial farms was dropped from a consolidated ver-
sion of the bills, while some small but significant
modifications were made to the original propos-
als. Such concessions would likely not have oc-
curred without the pressure exerted on govern-
ment officials by the MORE-AR campaign.
Another major activity initiated by PARRDS in1995 was the Philippine Campaign for Agrarian
Reform and Rural Development (PhilCARRD)
waged nationwide from June to October that year.
The formal launching of PhilCARRD on June 6
was marked by a two-day national consultation.
Two hundred ARRD advocates representing 80
organizations came from 30 provinces. PARRDS
served as secretariat for the activity.
The consultation helped to invigorate the CARP
implementation process by a careful elaboration
of PARRDS alternative analysis and political
strategy vis--vis CARP. It was a contextualization
process that went beyond the automatic suc-
cesses picture painted by the government and its
uncritical supporters on the one hand, and the
inevitable failures scenario projected by critics
of CARP on the other. The effort to look at what
more could have been achieved given the situa-
tion, and what was impossible to achieve because
of the situation was a major breakthrough inARRD advocacy. It finally opened up discussion
of the difficult how to questions related to
CARP implementation from a progressive per-
spective. The PhilCARRD was all the more sig-
nificant since it brought together ARRD advo-
cates from both society and the state, with the so-
cietal advocates asserting their right to full and
meaningful participation in the program imple-
mentation process, and the DAR officials being
held accountable for the way implementation wasproceeding. In recognition of the impending
deadline of CARP (then still believed to be
1998), the 1995 PhilCARRD inaugurated a fast-
track implementation campaign targeting redis-
tribution of two million hectares of land and for-
mation of 2000 agrarian reform communities
(ARCs) by 1998.
As part of this fast-track campaign, the
PhilCARRD consultation also mandated the hold-
ing of PO-NGO-GO consultations at the provin-cial level (Provincial Consultations on Agrarian
Reform and Rural Development or
ProCARRDs) to address the specific problems
of CARP implementation on the ground in 30
provinces. As a result, PARRDS worked with
other NGOs to initiate ProCARRDS in a number
of provinces, including four where PARRDS pro-
vincial coalition-builders had been deployed the
previous year (Nueva Ecija, Cavite, Bulacan and
Pampanga), as well as several others where
PARRDS has contacts (Northern Samar, Antique,
and Marinduque). This first round of ProCARRDs
was characterized by lively discussions by farmers
on actual land dispute cases. In some provinces,
the consultations resulted in the establishment of
operational mechanisms for resolving actual land
dispute cases (PARRDS Annual Report 1995).
Meanwhile, coalition-building initiatives gave birth
to new coalitional formations in the remaining
three provinces (Davao del Norte, Cebu, and
South Cotabato) where PARRDS had launchedARRD coalition-building efforts the previous
year, but where ProCARRDs were not conducted
in 1995. In all seven PARRDS provinces, emerg-
ing local coalitions spearheaded local mobiliza-
tions, PO-NGO-GO dialogues and negotiations,
and advocacy campaigns around ARRD issues
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and concerns linked to the specific profiles of their
respective provinces.
In addition to these activities both in defense of
CARPs integrity as such (MORE-AR) and in an
effort to implement agrarian reform from below
(PhilCARRD, ProCARRDs, and provincial coa-
lition activities) PARRDS was active in re-
sponding to the rice crisis which hit the country
in 1995. Working with a number of other pro-
gressive networks and organizations concerned
about the immediate food crisis in particular and
its implications for the countrys long-term food
security in general, PARRDS initiated or partici-pated in numerous mobilizations, consultations,
workshops and dialogues with Department of
Agriculture officials. In particular, PARRDS was
active in initiating the Kilusang Kasarinlan sa
Pagkain (KSP, or Food Security Movement), a
multisectoral action group directed at articulating
and projecting both short-term and long-term so-
lutions to the rice crisis. One of PARRDS key
demands was a recall of the Ramos
administrations Grains Production Enhancement
Program (GPEP) and its Medium-Term Agricul-
tural Development Program (MTADP).
PARRDS also worked to highlight a progressive
analysis of the rice crisis and larger food security
issues with its second Rural Development Expo-
sition and Trade Fair (RDETF), again organized
around World Food Day.
Finally, in spite of its busy schedule, PARRDS
managed to undertake important organization
building and maintenance activities in 1995. Theseincluded a series of education and training semi-
nars in selected PARRDS provinces (Cavite,
Bulacan, Pampanga and Nueva Ecija), a train-
ers training with participants from these and
other Luzon provinces, and an internal assessment
and strategic planning exercise (ASPE) in Novem-
ber 1995. Described as a major organizational
undertaking, the November 1995 ASPE gath-
ered together 44 PARRDS activists from the
working board, national secretariat and provin-cial coalitions. For five days the participants re-
viewed PARRDS performance over the past year
and a half, analyzed its internal capacity and ex-
ternal environment, and laid out strategic options
for the next two years (1996-1998).
The following were viewed as PARRDS strong
points: effective advocacy and campaigns, active
interface with reform-oriented government enti-
ties, effective combining of national and local
work, successful accessing of (financial) re-sources, strong commitment and unity of mem-
bers, and effective harnessing of members expe-
rience. The following were seen as PARRDS
weak spots: ineffective media work, financial in-
stability of some member organizations, lack of
internal review processes, inattention to field op-
erations by the national secretariat and the work-
ing board, understaffed and overworked secre-
tariat, and lack of clear systems and policies for
accessing and using common resources.
The following were viewed as PARRDS strate-
gic options for 1996-1998: to use PARRDS cred-
ibility to help member NGOs and POs access re-
sources from donor organizations and govern-
ment; to launch more ARRD campaigns, settle
unresolved (internal) issues, and add staff to take
advantage of government structures and avert
evasion of CARP implementation; to level off on
expectations, functions, framework and strategies,
to set up an appropriate structure based on the re-sults of a leveling off process, and to sustain
and develop PhilCARRD and other ARRD-based
coalition efforts; and to explore and develop
ARRD advocacy in all arenas (legislative, execu-
tive and public) in order to generate support for
ARRD and to challenge the governments devel-
opment program (Summary of Issues, SWOT
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Analysis Points, and Strategic Options and
Choices, November 1995 ASPE).
1996: National Positioning and Local Strength-
ening
Between the series of national summits held by
the Ramos government in preparation for the years
major event, the November APEC (Asia-Pacific
Economic Cooperation) Summit, and the work
program which PARRDS had set out for itself
during the November 1995 ASPE, 1996 was an
extremely busy year for PARRDS. Based on the
1995 ASPE results, PARRDS entered 1996 withfour major objectives: to strengthen itself as a
whole and consolidate the seven provincial coali-
tions; to position the ARRD national representa-
tional and negotiating coalitional mechanism; to
refine its programs and targets at the national and
international levels; and to help strengthen its
member organizations (PARRDS January-June
1996 Activity Report).
Initial steps toward internal strengthening were
taken during the first quarter of 1996 through a
series of consultations (All-Pilot Provinces Review
and Planning Exercise or APPRAP) between
national board and secretariat members on the one
hand, and representatives of the different local
member organizations in the seven PARRDS
provinces on the other. The reported results of the
APPRAP process suggest that while coalition
work and strengthening were proceeding in each
of the provinces, the degree of coalition strength-
ening was uneven. Some provinces had alreadymade significant progress in institutionalizing both
coalition mechanisms in local civil society, and
state-society channels for NGO/PO and govern-
ment interface at the local level (Bulacan,
Pampanga, Nueva Ecija, Cavite, Cebu). Others
had made progress more in terms of NGO/PO and
government interface (South Cotabato and Davao
del Norte). Meanwhile, the national secretariat
also held a series of meetings with representatives
of the member organizations and provincial coa-litions to exchange information on developments
in the national and local ARRD landscape, and
to identify ways for the secretariat to better help
strengthen member organizations as a step toward
strengthening the coalition. Memorandums of
agreement were drawn up as a result of these
meetings. Finally, members of the PARRDS staff
also participated in a number of trainers
trainings as part of the development of PARRDS
support services function.
In terms of national advocacy efforts, PARRDS
was involved in a number of activities, beginning
with the National Food Security Summit in Janu-
ary. It participated in both the regional consulta-
tions and national summit. PARRDS also took
part in various workshops and consultations held
just after the National Food Summit in prepara-
tion for the official MTADP Review under the
new agriculture secretary. The following month,
as a follow-up to the January summit, PARRDS
was active as co-convenor, along with MODE,
of the Southeast Asian Conference on Food Se-
curity and Fair Trade. PARRDS participated in
other food security-related activities as well, all
of which were geared toward NGO/PO prepara-
tion for the Rome Food Summit later that year.
In March, another national summit was held in
relation to the Ramos governments development
program, this time the Anti-Poverty Summit, for
which PARRDS pursued a two-pronged tactic.
While one group participated inside the summitand tried to influence the outcomes of the work-
shops, another group stayed outside the summit
hall and took part in a rally held to criticize and
put pressure on the government. In addition to
these pre-summit preparatory and summit-related
activities, 1996 was marked also by the holding
of an NGO forum on APEC and other related
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activities in preparation for the November sum-
mit held in the Philippines. For its part, PARRDS
was a major player in the parallel Manila PeoplesForum on APEC (MPFA) and an active organizer
the MPFA parallel conference and the regional
and sectoral workshops conducted throughout
1996 in preparation for the culminating event.
Finally, above and beyond its internal strength-
ening activities on the one hand and its involve-
ment in various summit-related activities on the
other, PARRDS also undertook its traditional June
to October ARRD campaign, as in previous years.
The 1996 campaign, PARRDS signature activ-ity, revolved around three distinct components:
the June 9-12 National ARRD Consultation
(NatCARRD), a series of ProCARRDS held from
July to September, and World Food Day in Octo-
ber. Compared to the previous years campaigns,
a distinctive elements of the 1996 ARRD cam-
paign was the addition of the Department of En-
vironment and Natural Resources (DENR) to the
list of government agencies with which PARRDS
initiated dialogues. Indeed, throughout 1996,
PARRDS maintained a busy schedule of meet-
ings and dialogues with top-level officials from
numerous government departments, including the
DENR, DAR, DA and the National Food Au-
thority (NFA), on matters raised in relation to the
different summits and the NatCARRD. The par-
ticipation in the NatCARRD of the League of
Municipalities of the Philippines (LMP) through
its president was also something new, for it
marked PARRDS growing attention to local
governments as arenas for mainstreaming a pro-gressive ARRD agenda.
According to the official NatCARRD report, six
consensus points or calls for action were reached
at the 1996 NatCARRD (attendance 200). These
were: to address problems in CARP implemen-
tation through the creation of a Special Action
Committee on Land Tenure Improvement Prob-
lems (SALCOTIP); to organize a task force to
study and propose changes to the CARL in viewof the end of its 10-year implementation period;
to hold ProCARRDS in 30 provinces to enhance
PO-NGO-GO interaction and speed up ARRD
in a participatory and empowering manner; to
push for revisions in the MTADP to ensure more
meaningful small farmer participation in agricul-
tural policy formulation, sustainable farming and
food security; to use various existing DENR
programs to promote speedier, more transparent
and more participatory distribution of public
lands; and to explore ways of making local gov-ernment more democratic and responsive to
ARRD concerns.
1997: Increasing Centrifugal Pressures
on the PARRDS Network
In 1997 PARRDS mounted national advocacy
campaign in response to a number of new chal-
lenges that arose on the ARRD political land-scape. These challenges can be divided into three
broad categories: new threats to agrarian reform
and CARP implementation, new threats to agri-
culture and rural development, and threats to its
ARRD agenda in general from a well-organized
campaign to amend the 1987 Constitution (with
anti-reform implications). Much of PARRDS
activities for the year were responses to these
threats, as well as efforts to build momentum in
the ARRD movement going into June 1998, when
CARPs originally mandated 10-year implemen-tation period was scheduled to end. New threats
to agrarian reform and CARP implementation
took the form of an organized campaign by real
estate brokers seeking to stop further implemen-
tation, a World Bank paper on rural development
policy recommending that the Philippine govern-
ment adopt a market-assisted land reform strat-
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egy in the 24 hectares-and-below category of land-
holdings, and finally, several specific and contro-
versial CARP-related land disputes that revealeddramatically the reinvigoration of anti-reform
forces in Mindanao (the Sumilao CARP reversal
case and the Stanfilco banana plantation case).
In response to the real estate brokers anti-reform
campaign, PARRDS participated in a special
PhilCARRD session, where it was decided that
PhilCARRD would focus its advocacy efforts on
ensuring the passage of an Agrarian Reform Fund
Augmentation bill. At the time, the bill was per-
ceived by PARRDS national leaders to hold thekey to CARPs continuity after 1998.
PARRDS then took the lead role in exposing the
World Bank policy paper and taking the Bank to
task for its recommendations and lack of consul-
tation with stakeholders in the NGO-PO com-
munity. As a result, the World Bank requested a
dialogue with PARRDS and other ARRD for-
mations, organizations it had left out of its official
consultation process. At the dialogue held in June
1997, representatives of PARRDS and other
groups presented a common position paper, which
among others, called on the Bank to drop its rec-
ommendation for a market-assisted approach to
land reform. Notably, none of the organizations
associated with the social democratic network
ARRD formation called AR NOW signed the
paper, but instead initiated their own consultation
process with the World Bank two months later
and produced a separate response paper which
did not go as far as PARRDS and other groupshad in rejecting outright the Banks recommen-
dation on market-assisted land reform. Their
less than outright rejection of the proposal, in turn,
was cited positively by the World Bank in their
revised rural strategy paper as an
acknowledgement of the potentials for a mar-
ket-assisted approach as an alternative to CARP
in the 24 hectares and below category of land-
holdings. Meanwhile, the first meeting between
the World Bank and PARRDS led to a secondone in December 1997, during which the World
Bank representatives responded to the NGO-PO
position presented earlier.
Finally, in this same year, PARRDS responded
to the eruption of both the Stanfilco banana plan-
tation case and that of the Sumilao farmers. In the
latter case, PARRDS and others attempted to raise
public discussion of the case to the policy level
despite objections by some groups that doing so
might hurt the effort underway to resolve theSumilao case itself. PARRDS and its allies rea-
soned that other CARP reversals had already oc-
curred and were likely to continue to occur in the
absence of legal prohibitions. The Sumilao case
was resolved later that year by President Ramos
before it could reach the level of a wider policy
debate on land conversions, while the issue of
CARP reversals was still pending as of the first
quarter of 1998.
Apart from these activities, PARRDS became a
major player in setting up the Philippine National
Peasant Caucus (PNPC), a broad national coali-
tion of POs whose specific advocacy focus would
be trade and trade liberalization issues. PARRDS
acted as the secretariat for part of the founding
congress and facilitated regional PNPC confer-
ences. Meanwhile, PARRDS also held in several
dialogues with different government agencies on
different burning ARRD topics, including na-
tional land use policy and trade issues, as well asNGO-PO-GO meetings on issues arising from the
Congressional Agricultural Commission
(AGRICOMM) and its output, the agricultural
modernization bill. PARRDS was part of the
Technical Working Group set up to conduct a
series of consultations on a National Land and
Water Use Code. Finally, PARRDS served as the
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secretariat to a national meeting in March, the
Second DAR-NGO-PO Workshop on Fast-track-
ing CARP Implementation. This initiative laterevolved into the Project 40 Now! campaign to
expand the ProCARRDS to 40 provinces and to
focus them on pre-identified priority landholdings
and land dispute cases. The Project 40 Now cam-
paign and series of meetings also opened up a new
venue for further discussion and processing of
burning policy issues and key advocacy initiatives,
including national land and water use policy, the
Sumilao case, and the agricultural modernization
bill then pending in Congress.
Brief Profile of PARRDS in Selected
Provinces as of the First Quarter of
1998 4
Davao del Norte
Davao del Norte is saddled with an almost sol-
idly anti-reform local DAR bureaucracy with close
ties to anti-reform DAR officials at the nationallevel. The few pro-reform DAR personnel in the
province have been confined to peripheral posi-
tions within the local bureaucracy. The provin-
cial and local government units in Davao del Norte
appear to be solidly anti-reform as well. Both the
local government units (LGUs) and the local DAR
are often controlled or strongly influenced by lo-
cal landed elites who are intensely anti-reform.
The character of the local landowning elite and
farming system seems to be a mixture of tradi-
tional (concentrated on coconut) and modern-
izing (concentrated on banana). Particularly in
terms of the banana industry, local anti-reform
interests are well-organized through the Philippine
Banana Growers and Exporters Association
(PBGEA). The anti-reform current in the prov-
ince is thus very strong and consolidated, stretch-
ing from key sites within the state to key sites in
society. Adding to this already inhospitable po-
litical environment, however, is the fact that there
is little, if any, significant support for pro-reforminitiatives in the province from other groups or
sectors in society that could help to offset the or-
ganized weight of anti-reform interests. Neither
the local institutional churches nor the local and
regional media nor local academe has shown
much interest in supporting local pro-reform ini-
tiatives. For the most part, the pro-reform forces
remain limited to the society side of the picture
(PARRDS-related POs and NGOs, plus a few
non-PARRDS NGOs), but within local society
they are relatively isolated politically.
Nonetheless, intensive activity is going on around
CARP implementation. Local LTI (land tenure
improvement) struggles are diverse in character,
revolving around two distinct pro-reform currents
that are addressed by PARRDS-related local
NGOs and POs. The first current is based on
workers struggles in the many large commercial
farms producing bananas for the international
market (mainly Japan, China and Korea), and thus
involves a complex combination of agrarian and
trade union issues. The second current of pro-re-
form activity is based on the struggles of small
tenant farmers producing mostly coconut and some
rice. This involves mainly agrarian issues, while
also being linked to the nationwide political battle
of organized small coconut farmers to recover the
infamous coco levy funds and use them to reha-
bilitate the countrys strategic but crisis-ridden
coconut industry.
With regard to the first current, the struggle for
full and meaningful CARP implementation in
Davao del Norte is in the midst of intensification
as June 1998 approaches. How these struggles
turn out will have far-reaching implications for
CARP implementation in commercial farms in
other provinces and regions. Within this first cur-
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rent of AR activity, PARRDS continues to ac-
tively support the efforts of banana farmworkers,
such as ALDA, the independent PO at theDOLE-Stanfilco plantation in Panabo, to assert
their rights to organize themselves and to benefit
from CARP. In addition, PARRDS is providing
various kinds of support (political, technical and
moral) to disenfranchised banana farmworkers
and small farmer settlers who are victims of
landgrabbing by big commercial banana grow-
ers. These farmworkers and settlers are now mov-
ing to strengthen the horizontal linkages between
their different organizations in order to strengthen
their AR advocacy efforts, particularly against thechain of commercial banana farms owned by An-
tonio Floirendo, the former Marcos crony. Most
recently, PARRDS provided financial assistance
to the newly emerging network of banana
farmworkers organizations for the founding con-
gress of Banana Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries
Association, Incorporated (BARBAI), their new
Davao peninsula-wide PO.
With regard to the second current of AR efforts,
that involving small coconut farmers seeking LTI
within the framework of CARP, PARRDS also
continues to support these efforts mainly through
its anchoring of the ProCARRD and facilitation
of various kinds of support services. This second
current of ground-level LTI struggles, however,
seems to be losing momentum as cases brought
forward by local farmers groups and their
PARRDS-related local support NGOs get stuck
in midstream, either in the local DAR or in the
local courts. The relative socio- political and geo-graphic isolation of the peasants engaged in local
claim-taking struggles appears to make them es-
pecially vulnerable to localized forms of anti-re-
form resistance, most notably foot-dragging by
local DAR personnel and legal harassment by
landlords. In addition, according to local PO lead-
ers, there is still a big need to find ways to extend
the reach of basic ground-level training and edu-
cation about CARP, its provisions, requirements
and procedures. Indeed, PARRDS involvementin Davao del Norte, mainly reflected in the CO
and ProCARRD-related work of its lead NGO,
currently centers almost exclusively on AR (rather
than RD) issues. This is understandable, given the
extremely inhospitable environment for full and
meaningful CARP implementation in the prov-
ince.
Cebu
Cebu continues to be ravaged by an elite-driven,neoliberal-inspired industrialization project that
has led to massive land conversion and the fur-
ther socioeconomic marginalization of the islands
rural poor. Cebu lies at the center of an official
interisland regional development plan which en-
tails the use of natural resources from islands
(Leyte, Bohol, Negros) surrounding Cebu for the
latters intensive remaking into the regions po-
litical, economic and luxury tourist center. Accord-
ing to this plan, Cebu is to become a premier re-
gional industrial center (RIC) with shipbuilding
facilities, a national telecommunications center and
a luxury tourist enclave for the regional elite. As
a result of ongoing moves to realize this plan,
Cebus remaining agricultural areas are now un-
der serious threat. This situation has given rise in
turn to a diversity of local land struggles in the
province.
In northern Cebu, where the islands sugarlands
are concentrated, sugarworkers are scaling uptheir collective actions and organizations from the
hacienda level to the intermunicipal level in order
to strengthen their impact on a dragging agrarian
reform process. Here CARP implementation has
been slowed down by the machinations of des-
potic landlords who are now also seeing increased
incentives to convert portions of their vast haci-
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endas into golf courses and seaside resorts. In the
central part of the island, small rice farmers strug-
gling for LTI via CARP are up against govern-ment efforts to transform the area into a port and
shipbuilding facility. There the local peasant or-
ganizations and their support NGOs, including
PARRDS lead NGO in the province, are con-
fronted with the difficult decision of whether to
continue fighting against big odds for their right
to own the land and to maintain it for agriculture,
or to let it go and start working instead on posi-
tioning for a decent relocation site. A similar situ-
ation exists similar in the southern part of Cebu
province, where urban industrial sprawl contin-ues to overtake the islands traditional vegetable
basket. In both areas, but especially in the south,
the ongoing claim-taking initiatives of potential
CARP beneficiaries face a combination of legal
and illegal obstacles. But while many land dis-
pute cases appear to be bogged down in red tape
during the CARP implementation process, others
are being lost de facto on the ground as a result of
legal and illegal land conversions.
Yet, unlike in Davao Norte where few political
openings exist for meaningful engagement with
reformist government officials in favor of CARP
implementation, local PARRDS-related groups
(both PO and NGO) in Cebu have found some
openings and been able to take advantage of them.
For example, the chairm of the PARRDS-related
peasant alliance in Cebu also chairs of the
PARCCOM, while the executive director of the
lead NGO of PARRDS in the province is like-
wise a member of the PARCCOM and was re-cently named head of the provincial Social Re-
form Council. The PO representative on the
PARCCOM is also a local PO leader in one of
the sugar haciendas in northern Cebu being ser-
viced by the lead NGO of PARRDS. These same
POs and NGOs play a lead role in the
ProCARRD. In short, PARRDS-related groups
at the local level have been able to position them-
selves well in key local bodies that shape the AR
and social policy implementation process and havea mandate from the government. Perhaps this rela-
tively good positioning could be viewed as even
more significant in light of the fact that the offi-
cial provincial development plan does not com-
pletely rule out agriculture, but still assigns a place
to farming in principle.
Many problems persist, however, including the
small working scope of CARP implementation
set by the DAR for the province. Of Cebus
110,000 hectares of agricultural land, only 38,000are considered part of the DARs working scope.
It does not include several sugar haciendas in the
north which average more than 300 hectares each.
Another problem is the persistence of legal and
illegal forms of landlord resistance on the ground
and via the CARP process itself. In some areas
farmers and farmworker beneficiaries have al-
ready received Certificates of Land Ownership
Awards (CLOAs), but are prevented from occu-
pying the land by landowner resistance. In other
instances, qualified farmers have simply been ex-
cluded from the official list of beneficiaries.
Sugarworkers are being retrenched by hacienda
owners as punishment for joining efforts to push
for CARP implementation. Meanwhile, the lack
of feedback and monitoring mechanisms within
the ProCARRD channel means problematic LTI
cases are raised to central DAR officials who at-
tend the provincial consultations with POs and
NGOs, but the situation often fails to go beyond
the status quo once the consultation is over. Suchfailure may be due to the local DARs inability to
keep up with all the cases brought up during the
consultations, or the inability of DAR central of-
ficials to keep after local DAR personnel to en-
sure a successful and timely conclusion in each
case. Yet another problem faced by local POs and
NGOs is difficulty in following up specific cases
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of local land disputes that get sent up to the cen-
tral DAR office for resolution. Many local cases
end up languishing indefinitely in the DARs cen-tral office because of the logistical difficulties of
bringing social pressure to bear on the national
DAR officials handling them.
Leyte
The DAR national office considers Leyte as a pri-
ority area for CARP implementation. With this
added push from the central office, combined with
social pressure from below and the opening of
new institutional mechanisms for handling prob-lematic cases, the local DAR has become more
cooperative with the NGO-PO community than
it was in previous years. But serious obstacles to
implementation remain, making the challenge of
maximizing opportunities for reform under CARP
difficult and slow. Plans for regional industrial-
ization have increased incentives for the conver-
sion of agricultural lands into non-agricultural
uses. Land conversions are on the increase in
Tacloban, as well as in Ormoc, a designated sat-
ellite city of the Cebu regional industrial center
(RIC). Conversions are made easier by the lack
of clear guidelines on whether local government
units (LGUs), through local zoning ordinances,
or the DAR, through CARP, has priority in de-
termining the fate of certain lands. Local DAR
officials have also been lax in defending agri-
cultural lands in the face of LGUs eager to de-
velop these for non-agricultural uses. Increased
incentives for landowners to seek conversion of
holdings is also a factor in the strong landownersintervention in the land valuation process. They
often simply refuse to accept the rates set by the
DAR. CARP reversals also occur, at times facili-
tated by local DAR officials. Other problems are
lack of registration of actual claims, non-distribu-
tion of registered CLOAs to actual beneficiaries,
and inclusion of unqualified claimants and exclu-
sion of qualified ones. Of the official DAR 1997
target of 10,500 hectares for CARP implementa-
tion in Leyte, only 3,000 hectares were actually(re)distributed.
Unsurprisingly, potential beneficiaries often re-
quire much convincing before they accept that
CARP has something to offer, while efforts to
convince them are hampered further by the time
it often takes for the DAR to actually install farm-
ers on lands awarded them. One problem cited is
the lack of funds for the required surveys. Mean-
while, there is still only limited political space for
pro-reform activists and advocates, whether NGOor GO, to enter certain local areas because of LGU
officials suspicions that they may be organizing
for another cause (either the underground revo-
lutionary movement, or if during election time, a
particular candidate). Local PARRDS-related
NGOs and POs also suffer from very limited
funds for organizing around ARRD issues and
concerns.
As in other PARRDS provinces, the work of lo-
cal PARRDS-related groups in Leyte has centered
on trying to build and sustain the pro-reform mo-
mentum under less-than-ideal conditions. Active
participation in the ProCARRD has helped to
generate the momentum of CARP implementa-
tion in the past year or so. Viewed from below,
the ProCARRD has served as a mechanism both
for engaging with local DAR officials and for
networking among NGOs and POs and potential
CARP beneficiary communities. As a mechanism
for state-society interface or engagement, it seemsto have jump-started implementation, strength-
ening both pressures from below and the reform-
ist current within the local DAR. The
ProCARRDs constitute a pro-reform mechanism
from which local DAR personnel cannot escape.
But while the initiative to conduct such consulta-
tions below the provincial level must still come
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INSTITUTE FOR POPULAR DEMOCRACY18
Between Uncritical Collaboration and Outright Opposition
from below (or it is likely they will not happen),
the idea of institutionalizing this kind of PO-NGO-
GO engagement is now more widely acceptedwithin the DAR itself than before. By April 1998,
the different NGOs on the ProCARRD steering
committee (some related to PARRDS, others not)
will conduct 12 MuCARRDs (Municipal Con-
sultation on ARRD), with each NGO initiating
the consultation in its area of operation.
Nueva Ecija
Nueva Ecija has long been considered the rice
bowl of the Philippines and one of the nationalcenters of the Philippine peasant movement. As
such, it has been historically the focus of much
attention by central state elites trying to implement
high political impact AR programs that typically
stop short of actual land redistribution. But while
the province has also been often assumed to be
one of the main beneficiaries of past agrarian re-
form programs, the reality is that the question of
how to achieve full and meaningful agrarian re-
form remains a critical problem in Nueva Ecija
today. Implementation of P.D. 27 (the Marcos AR
program) is still incomplete in many cases on the
one hand, while on the other, CARP implemen-
tation continues to be slow and difficult amidst
strong resistance from local anti-reform forces.
On top of existing backlogs in the implementa-
tion of P.D. 27, there are many backlogs as well
under CARP. The latter are the result of both nar-
row target-setting (so that many CARPable and
contested landholdings have been excluded apriori), and overreporting of actual land acquisi-
tion and distribution accomplishments by the lo-
cal DAR to the central office. Although the re-
gional DAR director is said to be open to reform
and considered a reliable ally by local AR activ-
ists and advocates, members of the local DAR
bureaucracy (provincial level down) are not. Many
end up being anti-reform by default instead, re-
maining silent, for example, while LGUs team up
with real estate developers to push through legaland illegal conversions of irrigated and unirrigated
ricelands and vegetable farms into housing sub-
divisions, shopping malls, industrial estates and
golf courses. Many others can be described as
actively working with despotic local landlords us-
ing authoritarian-clientelist means to limit the scope
of CARP implementation and to derail democratic
claim-taking initiatives by organized peasants,
both landless and near-landless. Finally, an addi-
tional threat to full and meaningful CARP imple-
mentation today can be found in the activities inthe province of the reaffirmist (RA) group, that
part of the CPP-led underground revolutionary
movement that did not break away from the CPP
leadership in 1993. Based on its outright
rejectionist stance toward CARP, it has been
subjecting PARRDS-related NGOs and POs to
different kinds of harassment.
Against this less-than-hospitable social and po-
litical backdrop, however, local NGOs and POs
engaged in claim-taking initiatives around
CARP implementation have emerged, and they
pose a significant challenge to local anti-reform
currents, with impressive results. Using a combi-
nation of social mobilizations of POs from be-
low and of allies in the DAR central office as
well as international solidarity support from
above, local AR activists have managed to com-
pletely consummate many local struggles for
land (both under P.D. 27 and under CARP) and
to make significant progress in many others aswell. Their efforts in resolving land cases in the
province have been so effective that one of the
PARRDS-related local NGOs, EMPOWER-
MENT Inc., is now regularly approached by farm-
ers who are not members of its partner PO, but
still seek its assistance in unresolved AR cases. It
may well have been partly in recognition of the
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WORK IN PROGRESS
Between Uncritical Collaboration and Outright Opposition
creativity, persistence and relative effectiveness
of local AR claim-taking efforts that the very first
ProCARRD in the Philippines took place inNueva Ecija in 1995. But while it was the
ProCARRD in other PARRDS provinces that
prompted coalition work around AR, it was an
already established independent local coalition in
Nueva Ecija that provided a push to the
ProCARRD. Even before Nueva Ecija became a
PARRDS province, local NGOs and POs en-
gaged in AR work were already beginning to
work together in the context of a broad
multisectoral coalition called Konped Kalikasan.
Encouraged by the local AR NGOs, the Konpedgroup put up its own AR desk, and it is from here
that the past and present PARRDS lead NGOs
and provincial coalition-builders (PCBs) have
been drawn. Since 1995, however, the
ProCARRD has become the main venue for coa-
litional activity around AR, while those most ac-
tive in the ProCARRD are past and present
PARRDS lead NGOs and POs.
Negros Occidental
Virtually untouched both by past government
agrarian reform programs and by globalization
trends, Negros Occidental remains dominated by
large haciendas devoted mainly to sugar and
owned by some of the countrys biggest landlord
families, including the Cojuangcos, Benedictos,
Aranetas and Lopezes. The province is the baili-
wick of one of the most powerful anti-reform and
anti-democratic political currents in the country
today. As a whole, Negros Occidental continuesto be an especially eloquent symbol of the urgent
need for full and meaningful agrarian reform and
rural development. Prior to the reinvigoration of
CARP implementation in the early to mid-1990s,
very little progress in land reform was made
less than eight percent of a working scope of
300,000 hectares between 1972 and 1992. What-
ever progress there was appears to have been lim-
ited to landholdings not controlled by the biggest
landowners. Historically, pro-reform actors bothin the local DAR bureaucracy and in society have
been weak politically, relative to the especially
virulent authoritarian-clientelist character of the
anti-reform landowning elite, that has made open-
legal democratic political activity among the ru-
ral poor extremely difficult and risky.
Unsurprisingly, the extremely limited political
space for openly organizing pro-reform interests
contributed to the emergence and growth of the
underground revolutionary movement in Negros
Occidental in the 1980s.
Since the CPP split in 1993, however, a reinvigo-
rated local peasant movement has gradually
emerged and is actively engaged in PARRDS-
type initiatives for fast-tracking full and meaning-
ful CARP implementation in and around the
provinces sugarlands. Currently the most active
and widespread local peasant organization (PO)
with a strong presence in 60 of the provinces
sugar haciendas is the Negros Occidental federa-
tion of Farmers Associations (NOFFA), a local
affiliate of PARRDS member organization
DKMP. It was NOFFA that broke the prolonged
silence around CARP implementation in Negros
Occidental last year, when an estimated two thou-
sand members converged in the provincial capi-
tal, Bacolod City, on June 10, 1997 to protest the
slow pace and anti-reform direction of implemen-
tation there. As a result of NOFFAs mobiliza-
tion, the provincial agrarian reform officer
(PARO) was replaced with someone reputed tobe more open to reform, though this remains to
be seen. In addition to NOFFA, two other local
groups (Negros Ecumenical Development Cen-
ter or NEDC and Negros Rural Development In-
stitute or NRDI) are actively organizing
sugarworkers and potential land reform benefi-
ciaries, while the local NGO Quedan
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INSTITUTE FOR POPULAR DEMOCRACY20
Between Uncritical Collaboration and Outright Opposition
KAISAHAN is providing CARP legal training
and education services to potential CARP ben-
eficiaries as well. Together, these four groupsappear to constitute the main pro-reform political
pole in Negros Occidental on the civil society
side of the ARRD landscape. They appear to be
the key players in the ProCARRD as well. Along
with two other NGOs (Family Food and PDG),
these six are considered by the provincial DAR
as their main PO-NGO partners in fast-tracking
CARP implementation.
By the end of 1997, the Negros Occidental DAR
reported a cumulative accomplishment of 91,850hectares out of a total working scope of 244,000
hectares, or 37 percent. Though an improvement,
this is still a very slow pace of implementation,
well behind the national average. Moreover, in-
cluded in the DARs cumulative accomplishment
report are strategic landholdings where it is far
from clear that the farmer-beneficiaries will in fact
benefit from CARP in the end. In particular,
the DAR report includes the Cojuangco landhold-
ing where the joint venture agreement provi-
sion of CARP is being applied under highly ques-
tionable circumstances. One of the most question-
able aspects of the case is the extreme secrecy sur-
rounding the negotiations that took place between
the landowner and the DAR, as well as the exact
nature of the outcomes of those negotiations. This
true to another negotiated terms of land reform in
the Benedicto estate. While statements of local and
national DAR officials portray the Cojuangco and
Benedicto CARP deals as major breakthroughs,
the full details have yet to be disclosed. Evensugarworkers in the affected landholdings appear
to know little, if anything, about the agreements
reached. This apparent lack of transparency
strongly suggests that organized sugarworkers and
their NGO allies are systematically being excluded
from the critical phases of implementation in or-
der to ensure a smooth process and palatable out-
come for the landowners. Whose interests are ac-
tually being served in these cases? The answer is
far from clear, and that in itself is increasingly dis-concerting to many of the local AR activists and
their allies.
Summary of Findings
PARRDS as an AR Advocacy Actor
Over time, PARRDS has done a relatively good
job of positioning itself in the larger political arena
around key issues related to agrarian reform and
CARP implementation, though its interventions
have certainly not eliminated the obstacles to full
and meaningful AR implementation. Foot-drag-
ging and outright manipulation of the AR pro-
cess by anti-reform DAR officials, legal and ille-
gal delay and evasion tactics by resistant landlords,
or potential beneficiaries political and geographic
isolation or unfamiliarity with the agrarian reform
law and its procedural requirements all these
continue to be obstacles on the AR landscape. Yet,
despite these and other persistent obstacles to fulland meaningful land reform, PARRDS interven-
tions have led to complete consummation of
land transfer in many cases, and to significant
progress, however small, in others. Given the
difficulty of the process of CARP implementa-
tion so far, it is clear that in a number of ways
PARRDS efforts over the past four years have
had made a positive impact on three distinct areas
of agrarian reform-related advocacy work: CARP
implementation, CARP integrity and CARP con-
tinuity.
The first broad category has to do with problems
of CARP implementation, specifically its slow
pace and the tendency toward clientelist modes.
PARRDS has made its most significant mark on
contemporary AR dynamics through its persistent
and innovative efforts to address the perennial
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WORK IN PROGRESS
Between Uncritical Collaboration and Outright Opposition
problem of slow-paced CARP implementation.
It has done this by combining different forms of
action via formal institutional channels suchas the media, PhilCARRD, NatCARRD and
ProCARRDS, informal, extra-institutional
channels such as parliament of the streets types
of mobilization, including international letter-writ-
ing campaigns, rallies and camp-outs, as well as
extralegal tactics such as land occupation, hu-
man tree-chaining (to prevent landlords from
cutting down coconut trees as a step to land con-
version) and more recently, tambakan (or or-
ganized dumping of farm products at local DAR
offices). PARRDS has also combined differentlevels of action: personal one-on-one discussions,
national dialogues and rallies, provincial-level en-
gagements with local DAR officials. This kind of
combined forms and levels of action approach,
sometimes been referred to as the bibingka strat-
egy, has been used successfully by PARRDS-
related groups to influence the outcome of numer-
ous specific land disputes. (See Borras, 1998).
It is this kind of approach that continues to set
PARRDS apart from other AR advocacy groups
today. In particular, through such an approach,
PARRDS has helped to increase the political space
and resources available to potential CARP ben-
eficiary groups for engaging in claim-taking ac-
tions the value of which outright opposition-
ists underestimate and uncritical collaboration-
ists too often overlook. In asserting their legal
right to land within the framework of CARP
through both institutionalized and extra-institu-
tionalized means, landless farmers andfarmworkers have themselves helped to weaken,
even if only temporarily, the clientelistic hold tra-
ditionally placed on them by unscrupulous gov-
ernment officials or trapo-oriented rural elites.
By supporting and promoting claim-taking ef-
forts by the landless or near-landless rural poor,
PARRDS has also contributed to placing limits
on undemocratic, clientelist politics, and to pro-
moting state accountability to rural poor citizens.
In addition, as a national-local network of organi-zations with international outreach capability,
PARRDS also has been instrumental in extend-
ing the political reach of many otherwise highly
localized and isolated collective claim-taking ac-
tions by potential CARP beneficiaries. For ex-
ample, PARRDS efforts helped and are continu-
ing to help bring national and international expo-
sure to the Stanfilco banana plantation
farmworkers struggling to be recognized as right-
ful beneficiaries of agrarian reform and as free
agents in the selling of their produce.
In more general terms, PARRDS efforts over the
past four years have helped to alter both th