(Eagle News)—The Palace on Wednesday, Dec. 26, slammed Communist Party of the Philippines founder Jose Maria Sison, calling him an “incorrigible rebel” whose “long exile” has “dulled his senses, put him out of touch with reality and in constant hallucination.”
Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo issued the statement on the CPP’s 50th founding anniversary, and after Sison, in a television interview, slammed Duterte and called him a “modern maniac in power.”
According to Panelo, between Sison and Duterte, the “choice is obvious.”
He said Sison is an “intellectual” whose five decades of “rebellion is a failure that brought only the loss of lives and destruction of property and fear to the very people he is supposed to have fought for.”
The chief executive, on the other hand, has begun “a revolution of change in almost all aspects of governance.”
He said Duterte was protecting the people “from the likes of failed ideologies” like Sison, criminals, among others.
“The winds of change will sweep this incorrigible rebel, who is living in comfort and luxury while his comrades are in the hills, as well as those who follow him, to oblivion and will be buried in the dustbin of history,” Panelo said.
After peace talks under then-President Cory Aquino failed, Sison fled to Europe, and sought exile in The Netherlands.
He has been living there since, but has remained vocal against the administration of Duterte and Duterte, his former student.
Duterte ended peace talks with the Communist rebels last year, following what he said were their atrocities that included the killing of a baby.