Philippine History

• Commonwealth Constitution, amend the 1973 Constitution, or draft a new constitution.
• The 1935 Commonwealth Constitution was chosen as the basis for the new constitution.
• Philippines remains but a dream to Filipino farmers who have been fighting for their right to landownership for centuries.
• The 1973 Constitution was amended to provide for a Unicameral National Assembly with a President and Vice President elected to a six-year term without re-election.
• The 1986 Freedom Constitution was replaced by the 1987 Constitution.
• The 1897 Constitution of Biak-na-Bato was an attempt to break free from colonial yoke.
• The 1899 Malolos Constitution was patterned after the Spanish Constitution of 1812 and influenced by charters of Belgium, Mexico, Brazil, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Unataemala, and French Constitution.
• The 1935 Commonwealth Constitution created the Commonwealth of the Philippines, an administrative body that governed the Philippines from 1935 to 1946.
• The 1973 Constitutional Authoritarianism was amended in 1940 to have a bicameral congress composed of a Senate and a House of Representatives, as well as the creation of an independent electoral commission, and limited the term of office of the President and Vice President to four years with one re-election.
• The 1987 Constitution, after Martial Law, was based on the 1935 Commonwealth Constitution.
• The 1935 Commonwealth Constitution has been in effect since 1987.
• The legal aspect of agrarian reform is strictly legal and sociological, focusing on conforming to the Constitution and Constitutional mandates.
• The moral aspect of agrarian reform is demanded by the moral laws under so many titles, including peace and internal stability, injustice, innate tendency of everyman to own land, and economy.
• Land reform enhanced agricultural productivity and consequently, increased net family incomes, allowing farmers to send their children to school and widen their contracts with the outside world.
• Through genuine and comprehensive agrarian reform, the Philippines would be able to gain more from its agricultural sector, who have been, for the longest time, suffering in poverty and discontent.
• After land reform, farmers began forming associations and stood in equal footing with their erstwhile landlords in social gatherings and club meetings.
• In the encomienda system, Filipinos were not given the right to own land, and only worked in them so that they might have a share of the crops and pay tribute.
• In the 1860s, Spain enacted a law ordering landholders to register their landholdings, and only those who knew benefitted from this.
• The political aspect of agrarian reform is a top-priority goal of government and a political process.
• In the system of pueblo agriculture, families were not allowed to own their land-the King of Spain owned the land, and Filipinos were assigned to these lands to cultivate them, and they paid their colonial tributes to the Spanish authorities in the form of agricultural products.
• Farmers continuously enjoy the increased benefits in the farm after land reform.
• From the encomienda system, the hacienda system developed in the beginning of the nineteenth century as the Spanish government implemented policies that would fast track the entry of the colony into the capitalist world.
• The encomienda system was an unfair and abusive system as “Compras y vandalas” became the norm for the Filipino farmers working the land-they were made to sell their products at a very low price or surrender their products to the encomenderos, who resold this at a profit.
• The economy was tied to the world market as the Philippines became an exporter of raw materials and importer of goods.
• Later on, through the Law of the Indies, the Spanish crown awarded tracts of land to Religious orders, Repartamientos for Spanish military as reward for their service, and Spanish encomenderos, those mandated to manage the encomienda or the lands given to them, where Filipinos worked and paid their tributes to the encomendero.
• The religious aspect of agrarian reform is based on biblical background, papal teachings, and church estates.
• Before land reform, such roles were the monopoly of the landowning class.
• When the Spaniards colonized the Philippines, they brought with them a system of pueblo agriculture, where rural communities, often dispersed and scattered in nature, were organized into a pueblo and given land to cultivate.
• Lands were claimed and registered in other people’s names, and many peasant families who were “assigned” to the land in the
• Agricultural exports were demanded and the hacienda system was developed as a new form of ownership.
• Agrarian reform is centered on the relationship between production and distribution of land among farmers and is focused on the political and economic class character of the relations of production and distribution in farming and related enterprises, and how these connect to the wider class structure.
• Agrarian reform is essentially the rectification of the whole system of agriculture, an important aspect of the Philippine economy because nearly half of the population is employed in the agricultural sector, and most citizens live in rural areas.
• Farmers’ initiative and active participation in leadership roles were promoted after land reform.
• Farmers began to take active participation in local and national elections after land reform.
• Land reform involves the “transformation of agrarian structure” or what are sometimes called “structural reforms”.
• Agrarian reform is a multifaceted program.
• There are only three kinds of landlords; the benevolent one who acts like a father to the tenant; the malevolent one who oppresses, and one with the combined characteristics of first two.
• According to the general experience in countries which have achieved successes in their agrarian reform programs, agrarian reform had resulted to favorable socio-cultural changes which may be summarized as follows; a change from self-subsistent outlook to one of surplus, a sound social order in the farming villages was enhanced significantly, and the farmers became more conscious of their rights and responsibilities as members of the community.
• Agrarian reform is an integrated set of measures designed to eliminate obstacles to economic and social development arising out of defects in agrarian structure.
• The core principle in agrarian reform is the primacy of the right of all members of the agricultural labor force who do not own land, near-landless farmers, farmworkers, small fisherfolk and other direct producers to own and control the land, have full access to other natural resources and gain full disposition over the produce.