Congress today passed a land reform law supporters say will improve the lives of millions of impoverished Filipinos. Critics say the plan could fail unless it is implemented efficiently. President Corazon Aquino, who asked Congress to enact land reform last July, was expected to sign the bill by Friday. Land reform was a chief promise during her 1986 election campaign against ousted President Ferdinand Marcos. The measure gives landowners the choice of dividing their property among tenants or sharing profits with them. It is expected to cost $70 billion and benefit 2 million farmers in this largely agricultural nation of 7,100 islands. Land reform is also considered essential to defeating the 19-year-old communist insurgency, which has its main support in rural areas. ``We are very pleased with the final bill,'' said Rep. Ramon Mitra, speaker of the House of Representatives. ``It is a measure that will change the lives of millions.'' Under the plan, each landowner may retain 12 acres and an additional seven acres for each direct heir over age 15 who will till the land. A landowner also has the option of sharing profits or giving tenants shares of stock instead of physically dividing the property. All but one of the 19 senators present approved the bill late Tuesday. Sen. Vicente Paterno, a landowner, abstained. The other four members left before the vote. The 203-member House of Representatives later passed the measure by a vote of 152-20 with four abstentions. Sen. Heherson Alvarez, a former agrarian reform minister who sponsored the legislation, said it would bring ``democratization of the means of production.'' Rep. Jose Cojuangco, Mrs. Aquino's younger brother, voted in favor despite earlier objections to the plan. ``There are a few sections that have to be amended, but for the first time this bill will really accomplish a genuine land reform,'' he said. The president's family owns a 14,820-acre sugar plantation in Tarlac province north of Manila. Rep. Bonifacio Gillego sponsored the original House bill but withdrew after changes began. He voted against the legislation today and told his colleagues they were ``foisting a grand deception on our people.'' He said the plan would fail if the government does not provide credit, expertise and other assistance to new landholders. He also predicted communist rebels will oppose the plan. ``They will try to expose it as bogus and not genuine, not equitable,'' Gillego told The Associated Press. ``Therefore, they will engage in a vigorous campaign. So the burden is on the government to show it is not bogus.'' Gillego said farmers would oppose the profit-sharing option and it might ``result in agrarian reform, if you will, through a revolution.'' Leftist farmers' groups have said the bill favors landowners. Guillermo Luz, executive director of the influential Makati Business Club, said the government's skill in implementing the program will determine its success or failure. ``The private sector will have to be involved, especially with technical and management expertise and credit,'' he said. ``It will have to devise a system of agricultural credits in the countryside.'' The bill also provides for the transfer to farm workers of tracts of public land greater than 2,470 acres now leased to multinational corporations. Government lands will be the first distributed in the 10-year program. Private holdings of more than 123 acres will be parceled out in the first four years and smaller holdings later. Owners of more than 123 acres will be compensated with 25 percent of the value in cash and those with less than 60 acres will be paid 35 percent in cash. Tax exemptions, shares of stock in government-owned or controlled corporations or Land Bank of the Philippines bonds will make up the rest of the compensation. Officials say the program will be financed by foreign aid and assets of Marcos and his allies that were seized on grounds they were illegally acquired. Marcos governed the Philippines for 20 years but was driven from the country in February 1986 by a civilian-military uprising that brought Mrs. Aquino to power. The Philippines has attempted about a dozen land reform programs in this century, but they have largely failed due to lack of funds and resistance from landowners. ``Genuine'' land reform was among the demands of pro-Soviet Huk rebels in the 1950s and early 1960s and is a principal goal of communist rebels who launched their current insurgency in 1968.
