LUCENA CITY—The Quezon provincial prosecutor’s office here flexed its muscles in favor of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program when it ordered an inquest on Saturday against three people connected to a landed family in Bondoc Peninsula for blocking the implementation of a land survey by the provincial agrarian reform office.
Provincial inquest prosecutor Juanito Serrano issued a safekeeping order against Claro Ong Zano, Frederick Rosero Paule and Elena Escobar Claveria, all personnel of the landowners, the Matias family.
Serrano committed the trio at the San Francisco lock-up jail, to be brought again at the courts for bail recommendation.
The legal counsel of the Matias family, lawyer Victor Jimenez, attended the inquest proceeding.
Claveria is the sister of the barangay captain who is the overseer of the Matias family land. The bulk of the family’s 1,715 hectares are in barangays Don Juan Verselos and Butangiad in San Francisco.
Jimenez claimed the Matias family still has pending motion at the Department of Agrarian Reform for the exemption of the Matias ranch from the implementation of the CARP law. He stressed that Philippine law provides that declared ranch lands are exempted from CARP. The trio have been accused of blocking the provincial agrarian reform office team headed by Samuel Solemero in doing the land survey on the Matias properties subjected to compulsory acquisition under CARP. Solemero made the arresting policemen as testifying witnesses against the accused.
Hacienda Matias was subjected to CARP in 2003 and named about 600 families as beneficiaries.
In trying to evade CARP implementation the landowners have already sued 68 tenant farmers for qualified theft of coconuts and trespassing, and about 30 farmers have been forcibly evicted, according to Jansept Geronimo, agrarian reform campaign officer of Quezon Association for Rural Development and Democratization Services Inc. (QUARDDS).
“Malaki na ang hirap ng mga magsasaka sa ilalim mismo ng mga panginoong may-lupa sa Bondoc Peninsula sa walang tigil nilang panghaharas at sila’y aming mariing kinokundena,” said Maribel Luzara, president of Kilusan ng mga Magbubukid Sa Bondoc Peninsula.
