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$682-M Marcos loot must
be shared
by CARP and human rights victims
July 16, 2003
The recovered ill-gotten wealth of the Marcoses
amounting to US$682 million must be used both to
compensate the more than 10,000 human rights victims
of Martial Law and as a fund source for the underfunded
agrarian reform program.
But this could only be achieved by amending Republic
Act 6657 or the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law
(CARL), former Senator Heherson T. Alvarez, who
authored RA 6657 in 1987, today said.
"There is no assurance that the human rights
victims during Martial Law will be compensated because
the law says otherwise. While we hail this victory
against the abuses and plunder of the dictatorship,
in order for the human rights victims to assert
their rightful claims, the agrarian reform law must
first be amended," he stressed.
He said government must find a way to continue the
land reform program for poor farmers while compensating
the human rights victims at the same time because
it is an act of State to award the human rights
victims moral and actual compensation.
Alvarez, who was the Aquino administration's first
minister of agrarian reform after the 1986 EDSA
Revolution and a leading figure opposing Martial
Law while in exile in the US, said just compensation
for human rights victims as well as an aggressive
implementation of government's Comprehensive Agrarian
Reform Program (CARP) must be assured but only through
an act of Congress.
Section 63 of RA 6657, as well as Section 1 of Republic
Act 8532 which amended RA 6657, states that funding
for CARP shall come from, among others: "…All
receipts from assets recovered and from sales of
ill-gotten wealth recovered through the Presidential
Commission on Good Government…"
As Isabela representative at the House of Representatives
in 1998, Alvarez filed House Bill No. 7000, asking
the Philippine government to first compensate the
10,000 human rights victims once the $682 million
is already with the government before anything else.
The Alvarez proposal will set aside US$150 million
from the $682 million, allowing government to legally
settlement the claims of the victims without violating
the country's domestic laws.
According to Alvarez, since the CARP was implemented
in 1987, only P25 billion has been recovered from
ill-gotten assets of the Marcoses to fund CARP.
"This $682-billion recovered fund could be
a boon for agrarian reform which suffered a major
set back this year with a budget slash of P2.3 billion
under the land acquisition component of the Department
of Agrarian Reform's budget," he added.
Earlier, Land Bank of the Philippines (LBP) officials
admitted that the bank would find it hard to finance
CARP this year and until 2008 when the CARP law
expires, unless government earmarks funding for
land reform in the General Appropriations Act (GAA).
"Since 1987, the land reform program has remained
underfunded. This new fund will allow government
to pay landowners and help finance support services
that will help CARP beneficiaries be productive
farm owners," Alvarez maintained.
Support services is the second component of land
reform after the land is awarded to the farmer.
These services include irrigation facilities, water
and power supply sources, infrastructures such as
farm-to-market roads and post-harvest facilities,
assistance in setting up of cooperatives, and credit
facilities.
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