The inability of President Rodrigo Duterte to keep the military from unduly operating in the hinterlands casts doubt on the government's sincerity or ability to negotiate an end to the almost 50-year communist armed struggle in the country, Luis Jalandoni, the former chairman and now senior consultant of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines peace negotiating panel, said Monday.
Jalandoni told a forum in Bacolod City that the "continued militarization of the countryside" in the guise of civil-military actions, such as medical and "peace and development" missions, is a violation of the government's unilateral cease fire declaration and undermines Duterte's pronouncement of his seriousness "to achieve national unity and peace" as well as his earlier order to state security forces to "be friendly to the revolutionary movement and government."
Jalandoni cited one occasion where Maj. Gen. Rey Leonardo Guerrero, chief of the Davao City-based Eastern Mindanao Command, was supposed to have declared that they can now sweep in to clear more than 100 barangays in his area of operations because, with the existing cease fire, "the NPA (New People's Army) won't fire at us."
"We later learned that Duterte was present" when Guerrero blustered about it, Jalandoni said. "Why didn't he call him out and why hasn't he disciplined military forces that have violated the cease fire?"
He also noted inconsistencies between Duterte's "progressive" pronouncements and the actions of the government and its forces.
No surrender
Jalandoni also stressed that the final agenda of the peace talks – the end of hostilities and disposition of forces – does not mean the NPA will surrender its weapons and demobilize its forces.
"Never think that the NPA will surrender its arms," Jalandoni told the forum.
"The NDFP has always declared that the negotiation does not and should not involve the surrender of the NPA because they are needed to protect the people and the people's democratic government, including the services it provides directly to the people in many of the country's 81 provinces," as well as any gains from a peace agreement, such as agrarian reform, national industrialization, and even external threats, he said.
He pointed to The Hague Joint Declaration of 1992, which lays down the framework for the peace negotiations and mandates "parity and reciprocity" between the two parties.
Jalandoni explained that, once the last agenda of the talks is completed and a peace agreement forged, "there may be a general amnesty for all combatants, both NPA and AFP (Armed Forces of the Philippines) but there will be absolutely no surrender."
Counter-insurgency
The communist rebels warned they may be forced to terminate their unilateral cease fire and "engage in active defense and defend the people" against continued military operations unless President Rodrigo Duterte ends the counterinsurgency campaign "Oplan Bayanihan."
President Duterte "must order an end to the Oplan Bayanihan war of suppression and rescind his earlier declaration that he will not pull out his troops from the guerrilla zones," the Communist Party of the Philippines said in a statement released at the weekend to mark the 100th day since it declared a unilateral cease fire to match that of government to mark the resumption of formal peace negotiations.
The Armed Forces of the Philippines, claimed the CPP, "has maliciously taken advantage of the NPA cease fire to gain military and political advantage on the ground. For the past three months, the AFP has practically observed no cease fire."
"During the entire course of the unilateral cease fire, the AFP has deployed armed units and maintained armed presence in centers of civilian communities in," it said.
"Based on partial reports, at least 470 barangays have been affected by Oplan Bayanihan armed operations since August 26," the CPP said.
"Once the full report is completed, the number is expected to reach more than 800. Close to a half a million people in 43 provinces and 146 towns have been subjected to or were exposed to various forms of AFP abuses in just over three months," it added.
It accused the military of "deceptively" describing the operations of "fully-armed combatants" as "non-combat operations" even as troops "occupy barangay halls, day care centers, health centers, gyms, elementary schools as well as civilian residences," and "do not spare even such sacrosanct places as the Dap-ay reserved for community elders in the Cordilleras."
It said it was "utterly dismayed at the failure of ... Duterte to rein in the war dogs of the AFP". It pressed him, "in the spirit of peace negotiations and extending the unilateral cease fire declarations," to order the military to "withdraw its armed combatants from the guerrilla zones and areas under the sway of the revolutionary government."
Duterte, it added, "must cast away his illusion that the (Government of the Republic of the Philippines) has exclusive dominion over the entire Philippines, adding that in significant parts of the country, there exist two governments that are at war with each other: the GRP and the people's democratic government which the NDFP represents."
Unless Duterte scraps the current counterinsurgency campaign and orders a military pullout from the hinterlands, it said, he "would be virtually setting the stage for widespread armed clashes with the New People's Army as Red fighters will be forced into active defense posture and defend the people against abuses by the forward-deployed combat troops of the AFP."
"He will only have himself to blame if this forces the hand of the CPP to terminate its unilateral cease fire declaration," it added.
Marcos burial
Meanwhile, the burial of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos violates a human rights agreement between government and communist rebels and will be among the issues raised by the National Democratic Front of the Philippines at the next round of formal peace negotiations in late January.
Luis Jalandoni, former chairman and now senior consultant of the NDFP peace negotiating panel, told a forum and reporters in Bacolod City that the secretive and hurried burial of Marcos at the heroes' cemetery on November 18 violates the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law, which was forged in 1998 to cap the first of the four so-called substantive agenda of the peace talks.
Explaining how the burial of Marcos, which President Rodrigo Duterte ordered to fulfill a promise to the dictator's family and which the Supreme Court allowed, Jalandoni said the CARHRIHL, specifically Part 3, Article 2(2), recognizes "the inherent and inalienable right of the people to establish a just, democratic and peaceful society, to adopt effective safeguards against, and to oppose oppression and tyranny similar to that of the past dictatorial regime."
Jalandoni stressed that allowing the burial with honors of Marcos, whose 14-year dictatorship was marked by widespread human rights abuses and plunder, violated this by disrespecting the sentiments of the survivors and the families of victims of the atrocities committed under strongman rule.
http://interaksyon.com/article/134950/reds-wary-about-govt-sincerity-to-end-insurgency
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