(Eagle News)—Communist Party of the Philippines founder Jose Maria Sison on Wednesday, April 17, said there can be “no genuine peace negotiations” between the National Democratic Front of the Philippines and the Philippine government under President Rodrigo Duterte.
Sison made the remark a day after Duterte reiterated his proposal for the CPP founding chair, who is in exile in The Netherlands, to return to the Philippines and talk peace.
According to Sison, it was Duterte himself who “has terminated and practically killed the peace negotiations” since he issued Proclamation No. 360 in November 2017.
He said the President has “proceeded to drive more nails into the coffin” of the negotiations by designating the CPP and the New People’s Army as terrorists, rejecting the “substantive agenda of the peace negotiations stipulated by The Hague Joint Declaration and the Joint Agreement on the Sequence, Formation and Operationalization of the Reciprocal Working Committees,” and by “wantonly” violating the “safety and immunity guarantees under the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees by ordering the arrest of NDFP consultants and their murder if there are no witnesses, as in the case of Randy Malayao.”
Sison said Duterte further ended peace talks when he “unilaterally scrapped the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law, and has dismantled the GRP section of the Joint Monitoring Committee,” and “unleashed his military and police dogs to red-tag, frame up and kill at will social activists and suspected revolutionaries in his all-out war and pursuit of fascist dictatorship.”
“While there are no GRP-NDFP peace negotiations, for as long as Duterte is in power, I find it more useful and worthwhile to concentrate on exposing the crimes of Duterte and demanding the end of his regine without being distracted,” Sison said.
In reiterating his proposal, Duterte also repeated what his then-Peace Secretary Jesus Dureza said should be the factors to ensure an “enabling environment” for the peace talks.
He said Communist rebels should not go out of their camps armed and should not resort to “taxation” and arson.
He said there should also be no talk of a coalition government, as he was not allowed to do this under Philippine laws.
