Implementation
Nine of ten district representatives elected to the House during the 1987 congressional elections were landlords.[829] This did not bode well for the Constitution’s promise to
by law, undertake an agrarian reform program founded on the right of farmers and regular farmworkers, who are landless, to own directly or collectively the lands they till or, in the case of other farmworkers, to receive a just share of the fruits thereof.[830]
Just as the idea of people power had led to revolution, so too did it lead to the Constitution’s envisioned revolution in regard to farms.
All land reform programmes before People Power in 1986 had managed to acquire fewer than 315,000 hectares of private land - a meager four per cent of the country’s farmlands.[831] The Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law of 1988’s (CARL) land reform programme swiftly surpassed this. In its first five years, it enabled the redistribution of over 431,000 hectares: more farmlands than under all its predecessor programmes combined.[832] By 2014 five million hectares had been distributed under the CARL.[833] Hence, 99 per cent of the initial scope of agrarian reform which Cory’s Government proposed ten days before the Constitution was presented for ratification - 5.3 million hectares, or 55 per cent of all the country's land in farms - has already been distributed.[834] This translates to 2.6 million farmer beneficiaries of an average 1.2 hectares each.[835]Even more remarkable is that no strong political party presided over CARL's success. Land reform in a democracy usually needs a strong political party to craft and implement it effectively.[836] Revolutions like People Power have historically enabled charismatic leaders such as Cory to establish such a political party.[837] And early on Cory had a good opportunity to do so: she owed her presidency to a wide coalition, not a narrow elite, and this gave her sufficient independence, authority, and an alternative power base.[838] Cory, however, displayed an ‘unwillingness to consolidate her grassroots support in a reform-oriented political organization, despite calls for her to do so'.[839] And while most of the candidates Cory endorsed won the 1987 congressional and 1988 local elections, ‘once elected, there was little reason for these politicians to remain her followers' - especially since her pledge to leave politics after her term instantly made her ‘a lame duck'.[840] The core of Cory's coalition officially merged as a party only six months after the 1987 congressional elections, but already started splintering merely a month after winning the local elections the following year.[841] While the dominant party in the House purported to support Cory's promised reforms, it blocked her more progressive nominees to the position of agrarian reform secretary.[842]
It was peasant organisations that took up the cudgels for agrarian reform.[843] These organisations found that after People Power, their ability ‘to influence the national politics of agrarian reform proved to be greater than in any previous era of Philippine politics'.[844] They succeeded in pressuring presidents Cory and, after her, Fidel Ramos to prioritise land reform,[845] placing it at the top of the national agenda by making it a matter not only of social justice, but also of political stability.[846] The CARL was thus partly a product of the peasantry's mobilised efforts, which ‘succeeded in keeping reform on the Congressional agenda and in getting far more out of Congress' than was possible before People Power.[847]
As in other countries, the Philippine peasantry’s mobilised efforts proved crucial to the effective implementation of land reform.[848] Indeed, land redistribution in the country was successful only in places where peasant organisations were strong.[849]
Urban land reform post-EDSA offers a similar story. The 1987 Constitution commands Government to ‘by law...
undertake... a continuing program of urban land reform and housing which will make available at affordable cost decent housing and basic services to underprivileged and homeless citizens in urban centers and resettlements areas’.[850] It also protects the urban and rural poor against arbitrary and inhumane evictions, and requires that they be given an adequate voice in their resettlement.[851] The continued mobilisation of the urban poor and of NGOs post-EDSA was able to usher in the Urban Development and Housing Act of 1992, which is the enabling law for the above constitutional clauses protecting the urban poor.[852]Just as in rural and urban land reform, legislation has been the oft taken road to the Constitution’s various goals. For example, implementing this constitutional guarantee of ‘fundamental equality before the law of women and men’,[853] Cory in 1987 (still holding legislative power at the time) promulgated the Family Code of the Philippines.[854] This Code amended many discriminatory rules of the Civil Code of the Philippines[855] on family relations, and thereby equalised the sphere of family life.[856] Other legislation promoting women empowerment and dignity as well as gender equality and equity in the home, workplace, and politics are the Labor Code of the Philippines,[857] the Women in Development and Nation Building Act,[858] the Solo Parents’ Welfare Act of 20 00,[859] The Magna Carta of Women,[860] and The Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act of 20 1 2.[861]
Three decades after People Power, however, several of the 1987 Constitution’s by-law clauses remain mere promises. ‘The State shall... prohibit political dynasties as may be defined by law' is one controversial example.[862] ‘Legislative bodies of local governments shall have sectoral representation as may be prescribed by law' is a less noticed one.[863] Unimplemented, too, is the constitutional promise to ‘by law, facilitate the establishment of adequate constitutional mechanisms’ enforcing the ‘right of the people and their organizations to effective and reasonable participation at all levels of social, political, and economic decision-making’.[864] These three by-law clauses all directly uphold the revolutionary promise of opening up the political process to a wider swath of the citizenry, and, unfortunately, that is also likely the reason why the elite dominated Congress remains negligent in its task to enact laws implementing them.
V.