(Eagle News) — President Rodrigo Duterte on Tuesday, Nov. 27, said he was mulling placing Negros under land reform.
Speaking to reporters in Bohol, the President said he was studying the same “because there’s a lot of trouble there and alam mo ito sa totoo lang I’m telling you now, the problem really is land.”
He noted that New People’s Army members were going about occupying lands to “exploit” the current situation.
“We cannot arrive at a peaceful resolution of this controversy if you do not address itong feudalism actually,” he said.
Earlier, nine sugarcane farmers were killed in Hacienda Nene in Sagay City, Negros Occidental.
The police and the military have blamed the NPA, noting that the victims were only recently recruited by the National Federation of Sugar Workers, a farmers’ group.
The police have said the NFSW was a “legal front” of communist rebels, but which the group has denied.
