Speech
of
His Excellency Fidel V. Ramos
President of the Philippines
On the enactment of the amendment to Section 63 of R.A. 6657 (The CARP Law of 1998) for the provision of an augmentation fund to further strengthen the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program and four other reform bills

[Delivered at the Ceremonial Hall, Malacañang, February 23, 1998]

Economic growth
with social equity

SIX YEARS AGO, I campaigned on a platform based on the twin principles of people empowerment and global competitiveness. The rural poor who needed greater access to training, technology and productive resources were my priority focus.

That same desire for the empowerment of the Filipino farmers is shared by the Tenth Congress, which enacted R.A. 8532 to further strengthen our Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program by increasing the Agrarian Reform Fund to P100 billion and converting it into a revolving fund to ensure the continuity of agrarian reform.

As we witness the signing into law of this significant piece of legislation, we highlight the expansion of our social reforms by way of four other landmark measures today. We have been resolute in our commitment to pursue agrarian reform in a fairer and faster manner.

The new law amends a basic provision of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law, R. A. 6657. The original fund of P50 billion to cover the estimated cost of agrarian reform, to be sourced from the proceeds of the sale of Government assets, excluding whatever interests these amounts may earn from banks or the installments that farmer-beneficiaries remit to the Government in payment for their lands, has been increased to P100 billion.

Doubling the Agrarian Reform Fund

R.A. 8532 thus doubles the amount for the Agrarian Reform Fund and requires its use as a revolving fund, thereby allowing the farmers’ payments for the land to become part of the fund to be further used for agrarian reform. Fund sourcing now includes 5 percent of the Government share from the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation, the Coconut Levy Funds pertaining to the acquisition and distribution of coconut-planted lands, and incomes of enterprises rented out by the Assets Privatization Trust program. Furthermore, equitable sharing of the Agrarian Reform Fund has been ensured by the provision stipulating that legislative districts identified as predominantly agricultural shall have at least one agro-industrial complex to be built out of the Fund.

This law represents the commitment of the legislative and executive branches to social amelioration and economic equity for peasants and small farmers. This law also serves to strengthen our safety net for the agricultural sector as we strive harder to modernize agriculture in this period of transition as globalization inevitably ensues under the World Trade Organization.

If only to emphasize the totality of this Administration’s commitment to comprehensive agrarian reform, I am pleased to inform Congress and our people that, in land reform, we have achieved in the last six years more than the combined achievements of the two past administrations.

Our Departments of Agrarian Reform and of Environment and Natural Resources have distributed to farmer-beneficiaries a combined total of 2.68 million hectares since 1992. In the last five and a half years, the Department of Agrarian Reform distributed 67 percent of the total parcels covered by land reform.

Congress’s reformist spirit

To protect the small farmers, the leasehold scheme on lands not yet covered by agrarian reform has been installed. There are 1.44 million hectares under leasehold, wherein a third of the total was done during the Ramos Administration. Our agrarian reform adjudicators have resolved 31,823 cases nationwide, and of this total, 93 percent was resolved during 1992-97.

Moreover, to ensure the effectivity of agrarian reform, we have provided for the delivery of adequate production support systems through our Agrarian Reform Community (ARC) program. To date, 921 ARCs, or an average of more than four ARCs for each congressional district, are benefiting 350,000 farmers.

At least six million agrarian reform beneficiaries have been waiting for the passage of this law. That long wait is over. Congress, in spite of the handful of doomsayers within its ranks, has once again displayed its reformist spirit, making it possible for the reinforcement of agrarian reform as the main instrument of peasant and farmer advancement by virtue of R.A. 8532.

Working harder for land reform

But land reform will not work if we rely only on laws or on the initiatives of the executive branch. We therefore urge all farmer beneficiaries, especially the organizations that are with us today—Bukluran ng Malayang Magsasaka, Kalipunan ng Maliliit na Magniniyog ng Pilipinas, Demokratikong Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas, Malayang Magsasaka ng Candaba at San Luis, the Solidarity Group of the Peace Foundation, the Partnership of Agrarian Reform and Rural Development Services, Pambansang Kilusan ng Samahang Magsasaka, Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries Association and all other groups here—to work still harder so that agrarian reform will realize its potential as the primary means of farmer and peasant empowerment.

In our support for farmer empowerment, I would like to announce here the grant of full presidential pardon to Ka Jaime Tadeo of the Kilusan ng mga Magbubukid ng Pilipinas.

Today also, we sign into law R.A. 8533, 8534, 8535 and 8536, each one a tangible proof of the continuing commitment of Congress and your President to ensure social equity with economic growth.

R.A. 8533 brings social justice to married men and women who have suffered or may suffer from the psychological incapacity of their spouses and therefore wish to have their marriage annulled. An amendment to Article 39 of the Family Code, R. A. 8533, abolishes the prescriptive period for the annulment of marriages celebrated before August 3, 1988 which was when the Family Code was enacted.

A timely law

Because of the prescription of ten years in the Family Code, our courts have been clogged with petitions for annulment, making it almost impossible for them to act on all these cases before the August 3rd deadline. With the removal of the prescription period, marriages solemnized before the effectivity of the Family Code may be annulled even after August of this year, provided that the psychological incapacity of one spouse is established.

R.A. 8534 acknowledges the practice of interior design in our country as a profession different from architecture and provides for the creation of a Board of Interior Design to administer examinations and issue certificates to qualified practitioners. This law is especially timely in view of the entry of foreign interior designers and consultants who are giving our more than 700 registered interior designers stiff competition for contracts here in our country and the forthcoming General Agreement on Trade in Services, which we will enter into.

The regulation of this profession as stipulated in this new law will also pave the way for the development of a more creative and more competitive group of Filipino interior designers who are aware of their professional obligations and are eager to promote their talents here and abroad.

We are proud to add one more highly urbanized city to the increasing number of growth centers in our country with the creation of the City of Novaliches under R.A. 8585. Now, we have 85 cities nationwide, 19 of which came into being under the Ramos Administration. To the people of Novaliches, the fastest-growing locality of northern Metro Manila, we offer our congratulations and best wishes for a brighter future.

Finally, we hope to save more lives and improve the delivery of health services to the people of the young and distant province of Apayao. Under R.A. 8536, the far North Luzon General Hospital in the municipality of Luna, Apayao, has been established.

Commendations

The last few days of the Tenth Congress, which were devoted to special sessions, have proven most fruitful, in spite of the dire predictions of the usual critics who have again been proven wrong. Our legislators continued to perform their duty to enact or amend laws that ensure the continuity of our economic, political and social reforms. We offer our profuse thanks to the men and women of Congress, particularly to House Speaker Jose de Venecia and Senate President Neptali Gonzales, whose leadership and powers of persuasion in their chambers and in the bicameral conference committees were most valuable.

For the laws that we have signed today, I acknowledge the efforts of the authors, coauthors, sponsors, cosponsors and committee chairmen and members of both houses whose names we will individually read later. Let me also commend the men and women of the Department of Agrarian Reform under Secretary Ernesto Garilao, who is also the lead convener of our Social Reform Agenda, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources under Secretary Victor Ramos, the LandBank of the Philippines, the Land Registration Authority, and other Government agencies.

Acknowledgments

We also acknowledge the help of local and international donor institutions to the Agrarian Reform Fund, the landowners who voluntarily turned over their landholdings to the program, and the farmers’ organizations and non-Government organizations which have silently but effectively ensured the success of agrarian reform.

Lastly, I would like to make special mention of a group of dedicated men and women who have quietly shepherded all the bills, especially the crucial ones, through their various stages and have bravely borne the pressures from the Cabinet and from Congress relative to the fast-tracking of the laws passed since 1992.

Secretary Garilao said he needed a miracle for the approval of R.A. 8532. The tireless workers of the Presidential Legislative Liaison Office under Presidential Assistants Romulo Lumauig and Ching Montinola helped to make the miracle come true.