NDFD/Sison: On the Persistent Refusal of Duterte to Engage in Peace Negotiations with the NDFP

Sison propaganda statement posted to the National Democratic Front Website (Feb 17): On the Persistent Refusal of Duterte to Engage in Peace Negotiations with the NDFP

By Prof. Jose Maria Sison
NDFP Chief Political Consultant

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If Duterte is hell bent on the armed suppression of the CPP and NPA in order to justify martial law and fascist dictatorship, there is nothing the NDFP can do but to pursue the people´s democratic revolution through protracted people´s war which is now accelerated by the escalation of oppression and exploitation under the US-Duterte regime.

It takes two sides in the current civil war in the Philippines to agree to negotiate with each other and arrive at comprehensive agreements on social, economic and political reforms to lay the basis of a just and lasting peace. The GRP and NDFP negotiating panels were making significant progress in the peace negotiations. But it was Duterte himself who kept on sabotaging the peace negotiations.

He deliberately reneged on his promise to amnesty and release all political prisoners. He kept on terminating the peace negotiations (three times!) by raising to the press complaints which he should have submitted through his panel to the Joint Monitoring Committee in the same manner that the NDFP had submitted to this body bigger and more serious complaints against the continuance of AFP, PNP and CAFGU offensives during periods of ceasefire. The NDFP complaints involved AFP bombing of communities and mass murder of children, women and elderly people.

In the third instance of termination, Duterte issued Proclamation 360 on November 23 and then Proclamation 374 on December 5, 2017 to llbel the CPP and NPA, their supposed supporters and financiers as ¨terrorist¨. All the way, Duterte has been the one making the obstacles and obstructing the peace negotiations. He has been obsessed with scapegoating the CPP and NPA in order to have the convenient and false excuse for martial law and fascist dictatorship through a pseudo-federal constitution railroaded by his constituent assembly of pork barrel plunderers.

Duterte has already gained the notoriety of a power-crazed tyrant, an inciter and inducer of mass murder under Oplan Tokhang ang Oplan Kapayapaan. But for the sake of the Filipino people who clamor for a just peace, the NDFP is always willing to negotiate peace with the GRP whether it is still run by Duterte or no more. There are sane and reasonable sections of the GRP that may prevail over the mad drive of Duterte to terminate the peace negotiations and wallow in fascist dictatorship and bureaucratic corruption.

https://www.ndfp.org/persistent-refusal-duterte-engage-peace-negotiations-ndfp/