MORE than 20 farmers managed to slip past security checkpoints on Tuesday morning and staged a lightning rally in the Malacañang complex to voice their Valentine message to President Aquino: “Have a heart and speed up land distribution in the country.”

The farmers, accompanied by some women representing Task Force Mapalad, entered the Malacañang complex on board a regular jeepney plying the San Miguel-Quiapo route and disembarked in front of the New Executive Building (NEB), where they held up heart-shaped banners calling for Mr. Aquino’s attention to their plight.

The farmers, who staged the rally for about 15 minutes before being brought out of the complex by policemen, came from Negros Occidental, Bukidnon, Agusan del Sur, Davao and Batangas.

Some of them took off their shirts and lay down in front of Malacañang’s Gate 3 to further dramatize their protest, before the policemen came.

In a press statement, the farmers said they wished that Mr. Aquino would “give us the only thing that matters to our forefathers, ourselves, our children and our children’s children—land.”

“We are appalled by our President’s deafening silence on CARPer. We feel like he has no heart for CARPer [Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program Extension with Reforms] after all of his promises,” said TFM-Negros President Alberto Jayme.

Jayme called the performance of the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) in land acquisition and distribution as “dismal” at 41 percent nationwide as of last year.

Presidential Spokesman Edwin Lacierda said in a news briefing that according to Agrarian Reform Secretary Gil de los Reyes, the agrarian-reform program is not only on track and may even be ahead of target this year.

“I can safely and confidently say to you that the implementation of the CARPer is on track and even ahead on the 2012 acquisition target,” Lacierda said.

He said that de los Reyes has the figures to back up the claim.

Asked whether new security measures would have to be implemented to deter more rallies in the Palace complex, the Presidential Security Group commander, Col. Ramon Mateo Dizon, said that there is no plan to change the current system as it “works.”

Dizon said pedestrians cannot be prohibited from walking along J.P. Laurel Street, the main throughfare in the Malacañang complex.