BONTOC, Mountain Province—Board Member Tomas B. Tawagen, the new Indigenous Peoples Mandatory Representative, is proposing local peace talks between the Communist Party of the Philippines-News People’s Army and the government through designated local officials.
Tawagen proposed this after the breakdown of the peace talks on the national level. As chairman of the provincial board’s committee on indigenous peoples, he said there have been precedents of the local-level peace talks, like the declaration of Sagada town as a “peace zone.”
“We strongly support localized peace talks between the government and the communist rebels if the national initiative suffered a temporary breakdown. Everyone wants to achieve lasting peace, but it only depends on how it will be undertaken. Thus, we want to undertake the local initiative in the province which there had been a previous success,” Tawagen stressed.