Mrs Aquino signs land-reform law

Press, 24 July 1987, Page 6

Mrs Aquino signs land-reform law

NZPA-Reuter Manila

Philippines President Corazon Aquino said sweeping land reforms she has signed into law responded to the needs of peasants and even applied to her family’s “hacienda" property.

She denied charges by left-wing farmers that she was giving in to pressure from landowners. “I think whatever I do people will say I have succumbed to pressure. I don’t succumb to any kind of pressure except my own,” she said after signing the land reform decree.

President Aquino said her family’s 6000-ha sugar estate would come under the law, adding her own landholdings could be “first on the line". “Hacienda Luisita-will be affected by the programme. I’ve talked to my brothers and sisters about this,” she said.

The decree, promised by Mrs Aquino when she took power last year, lays down general principles for redistributing all the country’s farmland to millions of peasants, but leaves to the new congress the question of how much land an individual can own.

The decree was signed just four days before Congress convenes. Mrs Aquino’s sweeping powers of rule by decree will then be drastically curtailed.

Landowners and even some members of Mrs Aquino’s cabinet had opM|pd a 7-ha limit set by earlier drafts of the de-

cree, saying such a ceiling would affect agricultural productivity and scare away agribusiness investors. The decree drew immediate condemnation from the country’s largest left-wing fanners’ union, which said it was inadequate and threatened to stage a protest rally today.

“We are against the decree,” Felicisfmo Patayan, vice-chairman of the Philippine Peasants Movement, said. “We believe many provisions of the decree are anti-peasant” Mrs Aquino’s spokesman, Teodoro Benigno, told reporters the president had warned her Cabinet colleagues that she expected them to support the programme.

“Whatever differences there are, we have to lay aside. If anyone here cannot live with it, either he keeps quiet or resigns. We can’t afford any dissensions at this point,” Mr Beningo quoted Mrs Aquino as saying. Mrs Aquino said the programme provided for support services to farmers. Apart from rice and corn, idle land and Government land, the decree also covered sugar and coconut plantations.

Reservoir floods Two people died and houses and farm land were damaged when a powerful cyclone caused a reservoir to flood in the Soviet central Asian republic of Uzbekistan, Thss newft agency —Moscow.