Through tenancy and land reform measures, we have improved the living conditions of our tenants and farmers. More than that, these new measures have opened up the path to land ownership. But ownership alone will not ensure to the small farmer the full enjoyment of his land. For this, it is necessary that he should operate his farm efficiently.
We have, therefore, redoubled our efforts in assisting him to become an efficient farmer. Since 1954, we have vigorously campaigned against the exploitation of tenants by their landlords. We are succeeding. We have helped the tenants secure a greater share of the fruits of their labors.Last year, the Court of Agrarian Relations was established.
Within the brief period of its existence, this Court has shown its effectiveness in the settlement of tenancy disputes. This is a fresh advance towards agrarian peace. The rate of land resettlement and land purchase for redistribution has not reached our expectations. It must be accelerated. But in another phase of land tenure improvement—the issuance of land patents—we have made unprecedented progress.
The Bureau of Lands in the last three years granted a total of 124,200 land patents to qualified settlers.This figure is more than five times the total number of land patents issued during the period from 946 to 1953. This fact not only reflects our intensified efforts in public land distribution but also attests to a significant advance in land reform. It means that we are setting up thousands of small independent farmers on land of their own, with the opportunity to work out a decent living for themselves and their families.The Filipino First Policy Carlos P. Garcia If the Filipinos cannot be first in the Philippines, where else can they be first? Only when Filipinos are first in their country will the Philippines be finally truly free.
Until then, their independence can only be a sham. While aliens control the economy, how can Filipinos be said to be masters in their homes or their government is sovereign in their lands? They are mere hirelings, dummies, servants – subservient to the will of others, serving their interests first. How can Filipinos advance their own? ” (One of the statements of the late President Carlos P. Garcia about the “Filipino First Policy”).
Notes on speech of Former President Carlos P. Garcia delivered before the MINSUPALA Consittutional Seminar at Zamboanga City March 13 – 14, 1971).One of the outstanding policies that characterized my administration as President was historically knows as the “Filipino-First-Policy. ” The important objective was to make the Filipinos first and supreme in the national economic household of the Philippines. For 400 years when we were under foreign domination the economic policy of this country had been defined and carried out principally for the benefit of the colonial power that at the time ruled us.
But since 1946, when we regained independence and became a sovereign nation, we started to define our national economic policy mainly for the benefit of the Filipino people. It is not an easy task to carry out or implement this policy because the roots of the foreign economic domination for 400 years penetrated so deep and wide into our soil that in order to achieve quick results we have had to resort to violent confiscatory measures of foreign properties, trample upon rights guaranteed by the Constitution and incur the hostile attitude of all peoples and governments of the world right at the start of our own independent existence.True, the right of the sovereign Philippine nation to be first and supreme in their economic household is legitimate and undeniable in the same way that the Americans want to be supreme in the United States, the Japanese in Japan, the Spaniards etc. , but we have to do this respecting the constitutional rights of aliens. It had to be a slow long-range policy.
The first important step in the long-range policy of Filipino-First was to make the Philippines self-sufficient in the three greatest human needs of man – food, clothing and shelter or housing.In making the Philippines self-sufficient in food, the development of our agricultural economy should be sufficient. But in making the Philippines self suffiicnet in shelter or housing, there is need of developing our industries, especially textile and steel, In other words we have had to develop an agr-industrial economy. With this orientation we started quite aggressively towards the realization of the Filipino-first-policy.
