The House of Representatives has deferred yesterday formal voting on the bill extending the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program or CARP until the opening of the next session of Congress in July.

House Speaker Prospero Nograles said lawmakers instead passed a resolution extending the land acquisition and distribution component of CARP noting that the Department of Agrarian Reform, the lead agency in the law's implementation, still has a budget to continue its work until December this year.

The Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law was passed in June1988 with a ten-year mandate. It was extended in 1998 for another ten years.

After yesterday's plenary session of the Lower House started, an executive caucus of its members was immediately called. During the caucus an informal vote was conducted on House Bill 4077 which proposes CARP's extension.

ABS-CBN News learned that the results was 97 for the CARP's extension wile 82 voted against.

The straw vote's result however was not reflected in the plenary session as the formal vote on the measure was deferred, reportedly since the voting was too close.

Nograles also said the deferment of the vote would give solons time to debate the program's extension.

FARMERS PROTEST

The deferment of the House vote however caught the ire of many farmers who have been waiting for the approval of the bill extending CARP especially after President Arroyo herself declared the passage of the proposed measure as urgent.

Two of the farmers at the gallery jumped to the floor of the Lower House to protest the deferment while others unfurled banners. The plenary session was temporarily stopped as personnel from the House security cleared the floor of the farmers.

As of posting the protesting farmers were already outside the building of the Lower House and are reportedly planning to camp out.

The farmers, in their hundreds, earlier held a rally in front of the Batasang Pambansa complex.

Meanwhile Akbayan Re. Ana Theresia Hontiveros-Baraquel, one of the strongest proponent of the law's extension, expressed her dismay that the measure was not passed.

She said the failure to extend the law was a big loss to farmers.

She said she believes that a million hectares that would have been distributed under the law would now be placed under land conversion.

EXPIRATION PERIOD

House Majority Floor Leader Arthur Defensor earlier told ABS-CBN News Channel's Dateline Philippines that he believed that a joint resolution extending the acquisition and distribution component of CARP up to December 2008 should be passed by the Senate and the Lower House.

Defensor's statement however was aimed to remedy what he said were "two schools of thought" on the interpretation of the law's expiration when it was amended in 1998.

Defensor who said before the session started that he was optimistic that the Lower House would still be able to pass the measure before the adjournment said that there were divergent views on the expiration of the land acquisition and distribution component of CARP.

"… there are two schools of thought on that. The amendatory bill extending the life of CARP or rather extending the land acquisition and distribution component as a program shall expire in 2008. So when we speak of 2008 it doesn't mean a specific date within the year. It has to be the entire year, and the deadline therefore, the expiration of the year December 31. so in this case its December 2008."

"… the first extension, the bill expired on a specific date, because the law was specific. It says, it expires on such a date from effectivity of the law. But in the case of the second extension, it says the program, the funds of the distribution component shall be utilized until the year 2008," explained Defensor.

Defensor said he was of the position that the expiration of the said component of the law was on December 31.

He argued however that even if the Lower House would have passed the bill it would not necessary mean the proposed measure would immediately be enacted to law. He noted that movement of the proposed measure in the Senate has progressed less than in the Lower House.

"It seems the bill got stuck up at the committee and the agrarian reform committee of the Senate has not yet reported on the bill. So even if we pass the bill on third reading before we adjourn on Thursday, I doubt very much the Senate can pass it because it hasn't reported on the bill," said Defensor.