Presidential Agrarian Reform Council

Also known as: PARC — the standard abbreviation of statute and jurisprudence · The highest policy-making body of CARP — the Supreme Court's styling in Hacienda Luisita, Inc. v. PARC ([LawPhil — G.R. No. 171101, July 5, 2011](https://lawphil.net/judjuris/juri2011/jul2011/gr_171101_2011.html "Hacienda Luisita, Inc. v. Presidential Agrarian Reform Council, G.R. No. 171101, Decision of July 5, 2011 — LawPhil")) · The apex CARP council — the descriptive styling of the agrarian-reform literature · The Council — as the parties styled it in the Luisita litigation ([LawPhil — G.R. No. 171101, April 24, 2012](https://lawphil.net/judjuris/juri2012/apr2012/gr_171101_2012.html "Hacienda Luisita, Inc. v. Presidential Agrarian Reform Council, G.R. No. 171101, Resolution of April 24, 2012 — LawPhil"))

Buayan's unconquered datu, the lower-Pulangi sultanate, the 1902-13 Mindanao wars, and the CARP's apex council

Definition

The Presidential Agrarian Reform Council (PARC) is the apex policy-making and coordinating body of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) — erected by Executive Order No. 229 of July 22, 1987, which tasked it to “formulate and/or implement the policies, rules and regulations necessary to implement each component of the CARP,” and given its permanent statutory basis by Section 41 of Republic Act No. 6657 (the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law of 1988, approved June 10, 1988). (LawPhil — EO 229, LawPhil — RA 6657) The Supreme Court has styled it “the highest policy-making body that formulates all policies, rules, and regulations necessary for the implementation of CARP,” whose “official composition includes, no less, the President as chair, the DAR Secretary as vice-chair, and at least eleven (11) other department heads.” (LawPhil — G.R. No. 171101, July 5, 2011)

The council’s composition under RA 6657, as amended by Section 17 of Republic Act No. 9700 (2009), joins the secretaries of Agriculture; Environment and Natural Resources; Budget and Management; Interior and Local Government; Public Works and Highways; Trade and Industry; Finance; and Labor and Employment with the NEDA Director-General, the Land Bank President, the NIA and LRA administrators, and sectoral representatives of landowners and agrarian-reform beneficiaries — the 2009 amendments adding, among others, the requirement that “at least twenty percent (20%) of the members of the PARC shall be women.” (LawPhil — RA 6657, LawPhil — RA 9700) The council works through a PARC Executive Committee that “may meet and decide on any and all matters in between meetings of the PARC” (Section 42), a PARC Secretariat headed by the DAR Secretary (Section 43), and provincial PARCCOMs (Section 44). (LawPhil — RA 6657)

Identities

Source Type	Identity
Wikipedia	N/A — no standalone article (page verified absent this session)
Wikidata	N/A — search returns no item (verified this session)
DBpedia	N/A — DBpedia endpoint unreachable this session (ETIMEDOUT)
ProductOntology	N/A
Wiktionary	N/A
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)	N/A — id.loc.gov unreachable this session
MeSH	N/A
NCBI Taxonomy	N/A
AGROVOC	agrarian reform (c_196) — the council’s policy field, verified this session via the AGROVOC SPARQL endpoint (AGROVOC — agrarian reform)
Google Scholar	Presidential Agrarian Reform Council PARC RA 6657 Section 41 EO 229 CARP highest policy-making body PARC ExCom PARCCOM Resolution 89-12-2 Resolution 2005-32-01 Hacienda Luisita stock distribution RA 9700
ConceptNet	N/A
OpenCyc	N/A

Also Known As

PARC — the standard abbreviation of statute and jurisprudence
The highest policy-making body of CARP — the Supreme Court’s styling in Hacienda Luisita, Inc. v. PARC (LawPhil — G.R. No. 171101, July 5, 2011)
The apex CARP council — the descriptive styling of the agrarian-reform literature
The Council — as the parties styled it in the Luisita litigation (LawPhil — G.R. No. 171101, April 24, 2012)

Examples and Analogies

A cabinet sitting as a council: the PARC fuses the political executive with the program — the President in the chair, the DAR Secretary as vice-chair, agency heads around the table, and beneficiary and landowner seats beside them. (LawPhil — RA 6657, LawPhil — G.R. No. 171101, July 5, 2011)
A council that governs between meetings: because the plenary meets rarely, Section 42 arms the Executive Committee to decide everything in between, its decisions “reported to the PARC no later than the next meeting” — the delegation that kept CARP running. (LawPhil — RA 6657)
Approve, then revoke: the council’s Luisita arc — Resolution No. 89-12-2 approving the stock plan in 1989, Resolution No. 2005-32-01 revoking it in 2005 — shows the council as author and executioner of the same scheme, the supervisory loop the Court then reviewed. (LawPhil — G.R. No. 171101, July 5, 2011)
Verified statutory and adjudicatory data:
Created: EO No. 229, July 22, 1987; statutory basis RA 6657, Section 41 (June 10, 1988); composition amended by RA 9700, Section 17 (August 7, 2009) (LawPhil — EO 229, LawPhil — RA 6657, LawPhil — RA 9700)
Chair: the President; Vice-chair: the Secretary of Agrarian Reform (LawPhil — RA 6657)
Adjudications: PARC Resolution No. 89-12-2 (November 21, 1989), approving the TADECO/HLI Stock Distribution Plan under then DAR Secretary Defensor-Santiago; PARC Resolution No. 2005-32-01 (December 22, 2005), revoking the plan and ordering compulsory coverage (LawPhil — G.R. No. 171101, July 5, 2011)
Secretariat: headed by the DAR Secretary, assisted by an Undersecretary; listed among DAR’s central offices (LawPhil — RA 6657, DAR — Directory)

Usage Scenarios

1. Making and Issuing CARP Policy

Section 49 authorizes the PARC and the DAR “to issue rules and regulations, whether substantive or procedural, to carry out the objects and purposes of this Act,” and the statute assigns the program’s policy calls to the PARC: retention limits (Section 6), acquisition and distribution priorities (Section 7), valuation (Section 34), stock-distribution plans (Section 31). (LawPhil — RA 6657)

2. Passing on Alternative Schemes

Section 31’s stock-distribution route runs through the council: a corporate landowner’s plan binds only on PARC approval, and the Luisita docket — the 1989 approval, the 2005 revocation — is the standing demonstration of the power to grant and recall. (LawPhil — RA 6657, LawPhil — G.R. No. 171101, July 5, 2011)

3. Coordinating Implementation

The council’s field machinery — the PARCCOM in each province (Section 44), the ExCom’s between-meeting decisions (Section 42), and the DAR-housed Secretariat (Section 43) — carries policy to the provinces, the arrangement EO 229 began by making DAR the secretariat with the Secretary as Director-General. (LawPhil — RA 6657, LawPhil — EO 229)

4. Citing the Council in Litigation

In Hacienda Luisita, Inc. v. Presidential Agrarian Reform Council (G.R. No. 171101) the council appears as party and tribunal — the Decision of July 5, 2011 and the final Resolution of April 24, 2012 are the operative instruments. (LawPhil — G.R. No. 171101, July 5, 2011, LawPhil — G.R. No. 171101, April 24, 2012)

Strategies

Chair by the President, run by the Secretary: the design concentrates political authority at the top and operational authority in DAR — the ExCom and Secretariat arrangements that keep the program working between rare plenary meetings. (LawPhil — RA 6657)
Balance the sectors by statute: the composition law writes the stakeholders into the table — landowner and beneficiary seats by island group, a cultural-community seat, and after 2009 the rural-women and twenty-percent representations. (LawPhil — RA 6657, LawPhil — RA 9700)
Approve, monitor, revoke: the supervisory arc over the schemes the council blesses — approval in 1989, validation and revocation in 2005 — the sequence the Court affirmed as within its power. (LawPhil — G.R. No. 171101, July 5, 2011)
Carry the adjudications as ruled: this entry reports the council’s resolutions and their judicial sequelae exactly as issued — 89-12-2 as approval, 2005-32-01 as revocation and compulsory coverage, the trilogy as affirmance. (LawPhil — G.R. No. 171101, July 5, 2011, LawPhil — G.R. No. 171101, April 24, 2012)

Security and Safety Measures

Report-and-confirm discipline: the ExCom’s between-meeting decisions must be “reported to the PARC no later than the next meeting” — the statute’s check on delegated power. (LawPhil — RA 6657)
A funded, staffed secretariat: Section 43 charges the Secretariat’s staffing to the Agrarian Reform Fund and vests appointments in the DAR Secretary — the council’s continuity safeguard between political calendars. (LawPhil — RA 6657)
Judicial review as the outer safeguard: the Luisita trilogy subjected the revocation to constitutional measure and fixed the consequences — including, by 8–6, the November 21, 1989 date of taking. (LawPhil — G.R. No. 171101, April 24, 2012)
For researchers: cite the trilogy’s three instruments separately — Decision, Resolution, final Resolution — and the two PARC resolutions by their numbers and dates. (LawPhil — G.R. No. 171101, July 5, 2011, LawPhil — G.R. No. 171101, April 24, 2012)

Historical Context

The council was born before its statute. EO 229, issued July 22, 1987 in the first year of the restored democracy, “provided the mechanisms” for the CARP ahead of legislation: it created the PARC to coordinate implementation, seated the President as chairman with the departments of Agrarian Reform, Agriculture, and Environment and Natural Resources as vice-chairmen, and made DAR the council’s secretariat with the Secretary as Director-General. RA 6657, approved June 10, 1988, then wrote the council into statute at Sections 41 to 44 — the President as chairman, the DAR Secretary as sole vice-chairman, the agency heads, and the sectoral seats. (LawPhil — EO 229, LawPhil — RA 6657)

The council’s adjudicatory record was made in one long case. On May 11, 1989 TADECO, Hacienda Luisita, Inc., and 5,848 qualified farmworker-beneficiaries signed the Stock Distribution Agreement after referenda in which the workers chose shares; “the PARC, under then Sec. Defensor-Santiago, by Resolution No. 89-12-2 dated November 21, 1989, approved the SDP of Tadeco/HLI.” Sixteen years later, after the farmworkers’ petition and the DAR Special Task Force’s Terminal Report of September 22, 2005, the council acted again: Resolution No. 2005-32-01 of December 22, 2005 revoked the plan and ordered “that the lands subject of the recalled/revoked TDC/HLI SDO plan be forthwith placed under the compulsory coverage or mandated land acquisition scheme of the [CARP].” (LawPhil — G.R. No. 171101, July 5, 2011)

The litigation that followed became the council’s judicial ledger. In Hacienda Luisita, Inc. v. PARC the Supreme Court upheld the revocation, removed the stock option, and on April 24, 2012 declared its rulings final and executory — holding by a vote of 8–6 that the date of taking was November 21, 1989, when the PARC approved the stock plan, and directing distribution of the 4,915.75 hectares to the original 6,296 qualified farmworker-beneficiaries, valuation left to DAR and Land Bank subject to special-agrarian-court review. (LawPhil — G.R. No. 171101, July 5, 2011, LawPhil — G.R. No. 171101, April 24, 2012)

Operationally, the council has lived mainly through its ExCom and Secretariat: RA 9700 (August 7, 2009) restated and broadened the composition, and the official DAR directory still lists the PARC Secretariat among the department’s central offices. The plenary has met fitfully — in June 2016 the incoming DAR Secretary Rafael Mariano announced he would ask President-elect Duterte to convene the council, “the highest agrarian policymaking body,” for the first time in six years. (DAR — Directory, Inquirer — No more farm evictions–Mariano)

Challenges and Controversies

The Hacienda Luisita Adjudications, Carried as Ruled

Resolution No. 89-12-2 (November 21, 1989) approved the stock plan; Resolution No. 2005-32-01 (December 22, 2005) revoked it and ordered compulsory coverage; the Supreme Court affirmed and finalized. As this wiki’s Hacienda Luisita and Stock Distribution Option entries carry the record, both resolutions stand as the council’s rulings — the approval that fixed the 1989 taking date, the revocation that ended stocks-for-land at the estate. (LawPhil — G.R. No. 171101, July 5, 2011, LawPhil — G.R. No. 171101, April 24, 2012)

A Council Rarely in Session

The plenary PARC has gone years without meeting — the 2016 reporting put its last convocation six years back — with the statute’s business carried by the ExCom, the PARCCOMs, and the Secretariat; critics read the absences as a slowing of the program, administrators as the design working as intended. (Inquirer — No more farm evictions–Mariano, LawPhil — RA 6657)

Composition Drift Across Three Instruments

The council’s membership is not one list but three: EO 229’s triple-vice-chair design with DOTC and PCGG seats; RA 6657’s single vice-chair with NEDA, Land Bank, and NIA; RA 9700’s LRA addition, enlarged sectoral seats, and women’s floor. Which instrument governs a question of membership depends on the date. (LawPhil — EO 229, LawPhil — RA 6657, LawPhil — RA 9700)

The Chair Who Signs

The President chairs the council that approved, in 1989, the stock plan of an estate owned by the family of the sitting president — the conflict-of-interest dimension this wiki’s Hacienda Luisita entry carries, answered by the revocation of 2005 and the distribution order of 2012. (LawPhil — G.R. No. 171101, July 5, 2011, LawPhil — G.R. No. 171101, April 24, 2012)