3.0 Agrarian reform in private agricultural lands T he people-led revolution that overthrew the Marcos dictatorship signalled a period of reforms. Newly-installed President Corazon Aquino declared agrarian reform as a centerpiece program of her administration. However, in January 1987, 13 farmers were killed and 51 others injured when anti-riot police open-fired on unarmed protesters demanding agrarian reform. In July 1987, President Aquino issued Executive Orders 131 and 229 which instituted CARP. Following the ratification of the 1987 Philippine Constitution, the Congress for People’s Agrarian Reform (CPAR) composed of 12 national peasant federations, campaigned for the passage of a genuine agrarian reform law, the People’s Agrarian Reform Code (PARCODE). After intense lobbying in Congress, the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law (RA 6657) was enacted in 1988, as a compromised version of PARCODE. Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program. RA 6657 mandates the acquisition and distribution of all public and private agricultural lands and the provision of support services to agrarian reform beneficiaries. The law sets a 5-hectare ownership ceiling of agricultural land; landowners may retain five hectares, plus three hectares to each qualified beneficiary (i.e., children). It provides just compensation to landowners and prohibits the transfer of CARP-awarded lands except through hereditary succession. It exempts and excludes certain types of landholdings from agrarian reform coverage, and sets a timeline of 10 years to complete LAD. It protects the tenure of the tenant farmers by adopting the leasehold system and gives tenant farmers the same benefits as that of agrarian reform beneficiaries. In 1998, Congress passed RA 8532 that provided an additional 10 years and funds to complete CARP’s LAD phase. Yet in 2008, LAD remained incomplete. Thus, agrarian reform advocates launched a massive campaign for the passage of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program Extension with Reforms (CARPER). In June 2009, during the last session days before Congress adjourned, the CARPER law or RA 9700 was passed. Asian NGO Coalition for Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ANGOC) 39