MANILA, Philippines--Malacañang offered on Sunday fresh hopes for farmers dismayed by Congress’ six-month extension of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), without a provision binding landlords to the program.

“It’s not the end of the road,” Gabriel Claudio, presidential political adviser, told the Philippine Daily Inquirer in a text message.

Claudio said the controversial extension—a reversal of what farmers’ groups had wanted—would allow lawmakers and other stakeholders “to work for a consensus that will better embody the spirit and purpose of land reform as enshrined under our Constitution.”

“With everybody’s cooperation and vigilance, it could even be a new beginning,” he said.

Claudio acknowledged the “imperfections” in the joint resolution overwhelmingly approved by the Senate and the House of Representatives.

But he said the extension kept “the program alive and open for reforms and improvements in its implementation.”

The joint congressional resolution extended CARP for another six months, but removed the compulsory land acquisition and distribution provision—the so-called heart and soul of the land reform program.

Instead, it allowed only the voluntary offer to sell and voluntary transfer of ownership schemes, meaning it was leaving it to landlords to include their properties in the program.

The outcome of the congressional action on CARP, which would have expired at the end of the year, was not what protesting farmers had been seeking.
Eight Negros farmers, backed by Roman Catholic bishops, had gone on an 18-day hunger strike to pressure lawmakers into coming up with a meaningful extension of the program.

Malacañang welcomed the move by the Peasant Federation Task Force Mapalad to bring the issue to the Supreme Court.

“It’s the right of the farmers groups and other sectors aggrieved by the six-month CARP extension forged by Congress to seek redress from the courts,” Claudio said. “We will respect and even defend the exercise of that right.”

But he said petitioners should also consider the possibility that such a case might “imperil the extension itself since CARP expires at the end of the month and Congress is already in recess.”