IN SUPPORT OF EXTENDING THE COMPREHENSIVE AGRARIAN REFORM PROGRAM
15 December 2008
THE PARTIDO DEMOKRATIKO SOSYALISTA NG PILIPINAS (PDSP) manifests its support for the extension of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law as it joins other groups in urging our lawmakers not to kill the program. Our quest for genuine agrarian reform impels us to take this position.
We are not abandoning our stance that we need a paradigm shift in agrarian reform. On the contrary, we are affirming it.
After 20 years of implementation, twice as long as it was targeted to be, the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program has largely failed to achieve its objectives. Up to now, it has not completed its land reform component, partly because CARL was made full of loopholes by those who crafted it and largely because of the fierce resistance of big landowners. More importantly, CARP has failed to significantly uplift the lives of its farmer-beneficiaries, much less bring about rural development and fuel agro-based industrialization. CARP’s dismal failure in its economic objectives makes imperative the review of the wisdom, especially in this era of global economy, of cutting up big agricultural lands into small lots and distributing them among farmers with meager means, if at all, to make them productive.
There should be a better way of making land, which is a finite resource, serve the needs of the whole society and the generations to come. There should be a kind of agrarian reform that will not hamper but bring about increased productivity to the land, better lives to the tillers, development to the countryside and industrialization to the country.
Despite the failures of CARP, however, we maintain that as a social justice measure, it is a collective achievement of our peasantry and other social reform advocates. It is a gain by our poor’s struggle for social justice that should not be thrown away by our lawmakers.
We support the extension of CARP even as we push for a thorough review and evaluation of the program with the end in view of instituting reforms that will address its weaknesses.
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Gonzales bats for First World RP
29 November 2008
A First World Philippines in twenty years?
The idea may be laughable to many people, but National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales believes it can be done by Filipinos and it is a dream that they, as a people, should pursue.
Speaking in a forum with the administration, faculty and student leaders of the Batangas State University in Batangas City this week, Gonzales said the key to addressing the country’s many alarming problems is for its people to endeavor to become First World.
“Our problems of hunger, poverty, insurgency, terrorism and corruption will not go away unless we become First World,” Gonzales, also the chair of Partido Demokratiko Sosyalista ng Pilipinas, stressed.
His idea elicited enthusiastic reactions from his audience, the student leaders and their mentors alike. Led by the university’s president, Dra. Nora Magnaye, they thanked him profusely at the end of the forum “for inspiring them.” The forum was dubbed “BSU and the First World Philippines”.
The national security adviser noted that it took Lee Kuan Yew twenty years to turn Singapore into a First World country. He said the Philippines can also become one and perhaps even in a shorter period of time if it has the fundamentals in becoming so.
Gonzales said the first step is for the Filipinos to make the fundamental decision, as one people, to make the country First World. “It takes the talents, skills and efforts of an entire nation to make their country First World. So, we must change our thinking. We must first believe we can and then decide to work together to become one.”
He also pointed out that the task requires reviving the Filipinos’ love for the country. “We cannot become First World, in fact we will not go anywhere as a people, if we do not love our country.”
Gonzales added that the task demands that the people settle fundamental questions like ‘What kind of society do we want? Where do we really want to go as a people?’ “It is very important that consensus on these fundamental questions be built so that we can move as one in making the Philippines First World.”
He noted that the Philippines is “a country composed of more than one nation” and as such, it is important that its people learn “harmony or unity in diversity” if it is to move toward First World status.
Gonzales also emphasized the important role of the education sector in the task. “Universities should begin telling our youth that we need to make our country First World. It is also the responsibility of our universities to teach our youth love of country.”
PDSP rejects term extension of elected officials
29 November 2008
THE Partido Demokratiko Sosyalista ng Pilipinas, which is headed by National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales, yesterday said it rejects any attempt to extend the term of incumbent elected officials.
Jesuit priest Romeo Intengan, co-founder of the PDSP with Gonzales, said any such move will be inviting political trouble. He reiterated his party’s position that instead of considering proposals to amend the Constitution before 2010, government should ensure that the forthcoming elections will be clean and credible and will be conducted as scheduled by the Constitution.
The PDSP is for charter change, but it should be for the right reasons, at the right time, in the right way and with clear consent from the people, Intengan clarified.
He said his party supports charter change to effect fundamental political reforms but it believes that the best and most democratic way to do this is through a constitutional convention.
The party’s general secretary, lawyer Ramel Muria, has noted that changing the Constitution now is a move that is unpopular and divisive.
