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Friday, March 29, 2024

Reds for peace gab after ‘failed’ plot

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The communist rebels claim they are open to resuming the peace talks with the government in 2019, but the Communist Party of the Philippines says overthrowing the Duterte administration remains its top priority.

“The National Democratic Front of the Philippines is authorized to be open to the peace negotiations with the current and prospective regime of the reactionary government, but its principal work now is to work for the ouster of the Duterte regime,” CPP founding chairman Jose Maria Sison said in a statement on Tuesday.

“The NDFP will be able to cooperate with all possible allies in the broad united front in order to isolate and oust the Duterte regime from power.”

Malacañang has called the CPP’s decades-old campaign against the government as a “failed rebellion,” but Sison said the communist rebels would still perform their leading role “promptly, correctly and clearly.”

“We will base plans and directives on the strength accumulated in 50 years of revolutionary struggle and the current circumstances and demands of the people,” Sison said.

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“We will carry out the tasks to further strengthen and advance the Party and the revolutionary movement of the people.”

The peace talks between the government and the communist rebels bogged down in November 2017 when President Rodrigo Duterte walked away from the negotiating table after repeatedly blaming the rebels for violating the unilateral ceasefire.

Duterte then imposed a number of conditions before the talks could be revived.

But Sison rejected the government’s push for localized peace talks, calling it a “cheap trick” that had failed many times.

He said the termination of the peace talks only showed that the Duterte administration was not serious in pursuing peace.

“Duterte is not interested in serious peace negotiations to address the roots of the armed conflict and to make comprehensive agreements on social, economic and political reforms in order to lay the basis for a just and lasting peace,” Sison said.

He said Duterte’s proclamations and executive orders had rendered the peace negotiations implausible.

“What he wants is the impossible, which is the surrender of the revolutionary movement of the people,” Sison said.

Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana has said the peace talks will only resume if the rebels will renounce their armed struggle.

He said Sison snubbed the localized peace talks because he wanted to make the decades-old riff reach the international scene.

“It’s part of their strategies. They want to internationalize the issue even if the issue is not an international issue in the first place. It is our problem here in the Philippines,” Lorenzana said last week.

Presidential Spokesman Salvador Panelo says Duterte will never allow the resumption of the peace talks as long as the rebels are violating the terms of the truce.

Sison says the New People’s Army will intensify its tactical offensives and strengthen its movements as the rebels anticipate things to get worse under the Duterte leadership.

“The Filipino people expect that this year, 2019, the socio-economic and political crisis of the ruling system will worsen and that the Duterte regime will even aggravate the crisis by imposing heavier taxes and causing the prices of basic goods and services to rise further,” Sison said.

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