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Cralaw Virtua1aw Library

This document discusses and rejects challenges to the constitutionality of several laws and executive orders related to agrarian reform in the Philippines. It finds that these measures do not violate due process and that they balance the rights of landowners and tenant farmers. While not perfect, these enactments aim to free farmers from long-standing servitude and allow them to own the land they till, fulfilling their hopes for a more secure future.

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Jhenjhen Ganda
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23 views2 pages

Cralaw Virtua1aw Library

This document discusses and rejects challenges to the constitutionality of several laws and executive orders related to agrarian reform in the Philippines. It finds that these measures do not violate due process and that they balance the rights of landowners and tenant farmers. While not perfect, these enactments aim to free farmers from long-standing servitude and allow them to own the land they till, fulfilling their hopes for a more secure future.

Uploaded by

Jhenjhen Ganda
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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bonds with an accessible bank. Until then, title also remains with the landowner.

57 No outright change
of ownership is contemplated either.
Hence, the argument that the assailed measures violate due process by arbitrarily transferring title
before the land is fully paid for must also be rejected.
It is worth stressing at this point that all rights acquired by the tenant-farmer under P.D. No. 27, as
recognized under E.O. No. 228, are retained by him even now under R.A. No. 6657. This should
counterbalance the express provision in Section 6 of the said law that "the landowners whose lands
have been covered by Presidential Decree No. 27 shall be allowed to keep the area originally retained
by them thereunder, further, That original homestead grantees or direct compulsory heirs who still
own the original homestead at the time of the approval of this Act shall retain the same areas as long
as they continue to cultivate said homestead."cralaw virtua1aw library
In connection with these retained rights, it does not appear in G.R. No. 78742 that the appeal filed by
the petitioners with the Office of the President has already been resolved. Although we have said that
the doctrine of exhaustion of administrative remedies need not preclude immediate resort to judicial
action, there are factual issues that have yet to be examined on the administrative level, especially the
claim that the petitioners are not covered by LOI 474 because they do not own other agricultural lands
than the subjects of their petition.
Obviously, the Court cannot resolve these issues. In any event, assuming that the petitioners have not
yet exercised their retention rights, if any, under P.D. No. 27, the Court holds that they are entitled to
the new retention rights provided for by R.A. No. 6657, which in fact are on the whole more liberal than
those granted by the decree.
V
The CARP Law and the other enactments also involved in these cases have been the subject of bitter
attack from those who point to the shortcomings of these measures and ask that they be scrapped
entirely. To be sure, these enactments are less than perfect; indeed, they should be continuously reexamined and rehoned, that they may be sharper instruments for the better protection of the farmers
rights. But we have to start somewhere. In the pursuit of agrarian reform, we do not tread on familiar
ground but grope on terrain fraught with pitfalls and expected difficulties. This is inevitable. The CARP
Law is not a tried and tested project. On the contrary, to use Justice Holmess words, "it is an
experiment, as all life is an experiment," and so we learn as we venture forward, and, if necessary, by
our own mistakes. We cannot expect perfection although we should strive for it by all means.
Meantime, we struggle as best we can in freeing the farmer from the iron shackles that have
unconscionably, and for so long, fettered his soul to the soil.cralawnad
By the decision we reach today, all major legal obstacles to the comprehensive agrarian reform
program are removed, to clear the way for the true freedom of the farmer. We may now glimpse the
day he will be released not only from want but also from the exploitation and disdain of the past and
from his own feelings of inadequacy and helplessness. At last his servitude will be ended forever. At
last the farm on which he toils will be his farm. It will be his portion of the Mother Earth that will give
him not only the staff of life but also the joy of living. And where once it bred for him only deep
despair, now can he see in it the fruition of his hopes for a more fulfilling future. Now at last can he
banish from his small plot of earth his insecurities and dark resentments and "rebuild in it the music
and the dream."cralaw virtua1aw library
WHEREFORE, the Court holds as follows:chanrob1es virtual 1aw library
1. R.A. No. 6657, P.D. No. 27, Proc. No. 131, and E.O. Nos. 228 and 229 are SUSTAINED against all the
constitutional objections raised in the herein petitions.
2. Title to all expropriated properties shall be transferred to the State only upon full payment of
compensation to their respective owners.
3. All rights previously acquired by the tenant-farmers under P.D. No. 27 are retained and recognized.
4. Landowners who were unable to exercise their rights of retention under P.D. No. 27 shall enjoy the
retention rights granted by R.A. No. 6657 under the conditions therein prescribed.

5. Subject to the above-mentioned rulings, all the petitions are DISMISSED, without pronouncement as
to costs.
SO ORDERED.

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