REFORMING THE AGRARIAN REFORM PROGRAM
A SCORE LATER, WHAT IS THE REAL SCORE?

Rolando T. Bello
UPLBFI Science and Technology Professorial Chair Holder

Introduction

On June 10, 1988, President Corazon C. Aquino enacted into law Republic Act 6657, “An Act Instituting the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program to Promote Social Justice and Industrialization, Providing the Mechanisms for its Implementation, and for Other Purposes.” The signing into law was attended with the President’s optimism that the program could achieve the twin goals of having a radical leap in agricultural productivity and the uplifting of the Filipino masses from their ancient poverty while expressing the hope that it will end all the acrimony and misgivings of the contending parties as well as uniting the nation behind the effort to make agrarian reform a success. The enactment of the law twenty years ago was the apparent embodiment of the then just ratified 1987 Philippine Constitution which declared as a policy of the State the promotion of a comprehensive rural development and agrarian reform. In addition, the fundamental law mandates the State to promote industrialization and full employment based on sound agricultural development and agrarian reform. These Charter provisions and the passing of the law set forth the claim that agrarian reform in the Philippines is inimitable considering the challenges of redistributive reform to be carried out under a democratic milieu. The ratification of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law (CARL) also came about from the heels of the infamous Mendiola Massacre on January 22, 1987, when state security forces violently dispersed a protest march on Malacañang by farmers demanding genuine agrarian reform. Anti-riot forces opened fire on the peasant marchers led by the militant Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP), supposedly killing