CARP in its 12th Year: A Closer Examination of the Agrarian Reform Performance 1 Saturnino M. Borras Jr. 2 , June 2000 INTRODUCTION Amidst gusty neoliberal winds sweeping across continents, pro-redistributive reform forces within the Philippine state and society have been trying to keep the barn lights burning for agrarian reform, so to speak. T he Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) has entered into the most trying moment in its history. It has now to address highly contentious private estates where landlord opposition to reform is greatest, while the g lobal and national free market- oriented context is becoming more hostile to redistributive reforms , like agrarian re form. Twelve years into its implementation, CARP accomplished, a mong others, the following: i) redistributed 4.84 million hectares of both private and pu blic lands, comprising 47 per cent o f the country's total farmland and representing 60 per cent of total CARP scope; and ii) directly benefiting about 2.1 milli on rura l poor households, that constitute roughly 41 per cent of the total peasant population. These achieve ments are fairly comparable to the maj or (non-soc ialis t) land reforms in world history. CARP's partial accomplishments must neither be dismissed as insignificant, as most critics do, nor be exaggerated as fully successf ul, as so me government officials do. These two extreme views can also be broadly categorized as "everything is wrong with CARP," and "everything is right with CARP", respectively. Both assessment perspectives fail to capture t he actual CARP status and the political dynamics that go with it. In fact, a good evaluation is somewhere in between. Looking through t he lens of widespread pessimism, today's partial achievement is far beyond what had been earlier predicted. But viewing it from the perspective of strategic agrarian transformation, today's accomplishment is, at best, modest. This middle-ground perspective is important so that empirically-grounded political strategies toward full and meaningful agrarian reform implementation can build on previous achievements while str iving to overcome weaknesses. This article hopes to contribute toward strengthening the middle-ground position around the ongoing agrarian reform debate and strugg le. The rest of this paper is divided, uneve nly, into three sections: Section 1 analyzes CARP's targets and implementing mechanisms, Section 2 analyzes accomplishments, while Section 3 identifies key challenges. 1. TARGETS AND IMPLEMENTING MECHANISMS A better understanding of CARP's acco mplishments requires a good grasp of the program's targets and implementing mechanisms. These are discussed below.