The evisceration of economic restrictions in the Constitution through charter change (cha-cha) is the state’s death sentence to the peasantry. 

Around 14.2 million hectares of alienable land may be beholden to foreign entities as ownership limitations on more sectors are removed, peasant group Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) feared. As such, economic provisions on cha-cha will reinforce the vicious cycle of chronic landlessness and crippled domestic production.

An absolute foreign takeover of key sectors further renders agricultural lands vulnerable to corporate appropriation and use conversion. “Mangangahulugan ito (cha-cha) ng mas malawakang pagpapalayas sa mga magbubukid at katutubo, pagpapataw ng mas matataas na upa sa lupa, lalong pagkalugi ng mga magsasaka, pagtigil sa pagsasaka, pagpapalit-gamit ng lupa,” KMP said in a statement.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s agricultural policies, from the proposed National Land Use Act to the  New Agrarian Emancipation Act, have already rendered the grounds for land-grabbing and displacement more fertile. Such is the precondition for extractive industries. And through cha-cha, many more foreign-owned enterprises—such as those in ecotourism, real estate, and agribusiness—will rise by supplanting the agricultural use of lands, KMP said.

A weakened domestic production follows from dwindling support for the already beleaguered agriculture sector. As past liberalization policies already debilitated local producers and stunted the nation’s capacity for self-sufficiency, dependence on importation will worsen and preclude aspirations for a productive agricultural base toward national industrialization. Amid the domination of foreign direct investment in manufacturing, trade deficits have only worsened, a 2024 analysis by IBON Foundation found.

“Foreign capital, if any, will only be infused to transnational corporation-controlled plantations and vast haciendas whose raw material production is mainly directed for export to serve the needs of advanced capitalist countries,” KMP Chairperson Danilo Ramos said.

Peasant groups continue to profess their strong opposition to cha-cha and call for the passage of genuine land reform through the Genuine Agrarian Reform Bill, which KMP asserts is a precursor for the development of the economy. 

Whether the agriculture sector and the nation at large will survive amid the persistent onslaught of land pillage hinges on the people’s struggle to successfully thwart yet another cha-cha attempt. As KMP Chairman Emeritus Rafael Mariano said, the proposed economic amendments will be the “last nail on the coffin of the Philippine economy.” ● 

First published in the March 15, 2024 print edition of the Collegian.