Macapagal Constitution

...

Under the Land Reform Program, the farmer will therefore have behind him a formidable battery of government agencies to insure that his transformation from a tenant into a lessee and eventually into a landowner will result in increased production from our farms, in increased incomes for our farmers, in better management of the farmer’s financial affairs, and—most of all—in the enhancement of the dignity and the social position of those who now live under the burden of tenancy. Realizing that the implementation of the program is the crux to the realization of its noble objectives, we pledge all our power, all our fervor, and all our faculties to warrant the efficient operation of all these agencies in order to insure the rise of the poverty-enslaved tenant into a free and prosperous farmer.

The machinery for carrying out the Land Reform Program will soon be in full operation. We shall see that the implementation of the program thereby will not be haphazard but systematic; will not be hasty but orderly; will not be reckless but resolute. It will be pursued in manageable stages, rather than as a breathless and one-shot effort that will sweep the nation overnight. It will be managed prudently and well, with all due respect to the rights of all parties concerned.

In abolishing tenancy and launching a decisive and bold land reform program, we confront a huge and monumental task. We dare say that it matches the historic proportions of no other achievement of our nation in the past, save the Philippine Revolution that began in 1896. Indeed, the Land Reform Program is a revolution in itself, part of the peaceful, ambitious, unfinished revolution which we are now waging to win for our people an adequate measure of prosperity and well-being. Land reform is not a separate and isolated program; it is a component, and a very crucial component, of our wide-ranging and integrated program to promote the rapid and sound social and economic development of our country. Land Reform will release the hitherto suppressed productive energies of our farmers, and will thus increase the capacity of our agricultural sector to provide our people with food and our industries with raw materials. Land reform will increase the incomes of our agricultural society, and will thus convert it into a large market for the produce of our industries. Land reform is not solely a program to help tenants; it is a program to uplift the whole nation, socially and economically. It is ultimately a proof and demonstration of the respect which our nation holds for the dignity and the rights which are attached inseparably to the human person.

It is meet to recall at this point that the Filipino has been associated with apathy and resistance to progress. Our national hero, Dr. Jose Rizal, has referred to this seeing trait as the indolence of the Filipino which must be overcome. For centuries, the Filipino tilling our farms seemed indolent because his creative and constructive qualities were overpowered and stifled by a sense of hopelessness as he languished in the dark prison of his unending poverty and misery. Since life was to him hopeless for advancement, his supreme ambition and recourse for human joy was to spend the occasional windfalls from his lengthening debt in order to drown his sorrows in tuba and basi or in a bet at a cockfight. This sense of hopelessness was a drug that kept him indolent and lukewarm to the charms of progress. Through this land reform program, which releases the tenants from endless darkness to the sunshine of new hopes, we can look forward to the day when the so-called indolent Filipino, after centuries, shall be no more, and in his place will arise a Filipino who shall work hard because he has a better life to work and hope for, who shall actively take part in community work that builds the nation because he has the dignity that makes him the equal of all his countrymen, who shall fight for his rights and do his duties because he has effective freedom for the discharge of this responsibility, and who, in the hour of necessity, will be happy to give even his life for his country because in his country he has land to call his own.

The Filipino farmer has waited century after century for this very moment and this very occasion. In a moment, as the elected President of this Republic, I shall sign the Agricultural Land Reform Code into a law of the land. By this act the nation shall put its indelible seal on this proclamation of the toiling farmer’s liberation and his victory.

So let this signing be recorded in our annals as an Act of Emancipation of the toiling farmer from his slavery to debt, poverty, and misery and of his dignification as a human being and as a citizen. By this act of emancipation, a new revolution is on.

In fulfillment of the dream of centuries and in answer to the cry for liberation of the slaved Filipino tenant in our farms from his chains of want and misery, it is now my cherished privilege and infinite honor to sign the Agricultural Land Reform Code into law as Republic Act No. 3844 on this memorable day of the Common Man.