Press Release
October 3, 2008

Arrest of protesting Negros farmers denounced by Pimentel

DAVAO CITY -- Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel, Jr. (PDP-Laban) today said law enforcers went overboard when they arrested, jailed and filed sedition charges against five farmers who staged a protest rally while President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was gracing the opening rites of the "Masskara Festival" in Bacolod City Wednesday.

Pimentel said the farmers were exercising their legitimate right when they mounted the rally in the President's presence to protest the government's failure to fulfill its commitment to take over and distribute to tenant-tillers the First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo's vast sugarlands in Negros Occidental under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP).

"I denounce the unwarranted arrest and detention of the five tenant-farmers who were demonstrating peacefully in Bacolod during the opening of the Masskara festival. It's a fascistic act without basis in law," he said.

The arrested farmers were identified as Hermegildo Padilla, Everlito Alguna, Bonifacio Alguna, Noel Estaris Jr. and Geraldo Batalla, all members of the Task Force Mapalad.

Policemen and members of the Presidential Security Group dispersed the protesters and arrested five of them after they unfurled placards calling for the implementation of CARP in the 157-hectare Hacienda Abacan which interrupted the President's speech.

Hacienda Abacan, owned by the First Gentleman, is located in Isabela, Negros Occidental.

Pimentel said the farmers, feeling desperate over their plight, staged the protest to call attention to the government's indifference to their long-standing demand for the parceling and distribution of the hacienda to qualified agrarian reform beneficiaries.

In a privilege at the Senate last week, Pimentel took the Department of Agrarian Reform to task for footdragging on the acquisition of Hacienda Abacan under CARP. He said the First Gentleman had agreed to place the hacienda under CARP as early as 2001 when President Arroyo came to power.

The property is administered by the Rivulet-Industrial Corp. which is owned by the Arroyo family. After being delayed for more than seven years, the DAR and the Land Bank of the Philippines started processing the voluntary sale of Hacienda Abacan to the government this year.

However, Pimentel said that the process was further snagged when Rivulet, through its lawyer Ray Alberto Rondain requested the Land Bank to stop the valuation of the property on the ground that there was a pending application for the conversion of the hacienda into an agri-industrial estate supposedly mainly for the production of ethanol from sugarcane.

Pimentel said the Land Bank officials have declined to set aside funds for the purchase of Hacienda Abacan despite findings that the alleged land conversion application was a hoax.

The minority leader urged the President to look into the plight of the farmers and do something about the CARP coverage of the First Gentleman's hacienda instead of tolerating their unjustified prosecution for criminal charges that were out of proportion to the acts that they actually committed.

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