OPAPP slams Satur Ocampo for opinion piece on localized peace talks

From GMA News Online (Oct 22, 2019): OPAPP slams Satur Ocampo for opinion piece on localized peace talks

The Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (OPAPP) on Tuesday slammed former Bayan Muna Representative Satur Ocampo for his October 12 opinion piece in which he claimed President Rodrigo Duterte set barriers to the peace process.

The OPAPP said it was the communists and not the Duterte administration that set barriers to the peace process by continuously recruiting students and attacking the government in the midst of talks.

“We believe it is crucial for local stakeholders to be directly involved in the peace process. As what we have witnessed, it is pointless to talk to leaders of an organization who employ deception and duplicitous tactics,” OPAPP Spokesperson Wilben Mayor said in a statement.

“By and large, localized peace engagements provide a stronger platform wherein the voices of the people who are the ones most affected by armed conflict, can truly be heard and whose sentiments can be acted upon,” he added.

In his newspaper column, Ocampo lamented the “localization” of peace talks through the signing of Executive Order (EO) 70, which he said “degrades – worse, sets aside – the substantive agreements/consensus already reached through high-level negotiations.”

Signed on December 4, 2018, EO 70 created the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF ELCAC) and institutionalized the use of a “whole-of-nation” approach to attain “inclusive and sustainable peace.”

Ocampo said the National Democratic Front of the Philippines had long rejected this framework for being “divisive rather than unifying.”

Ocampo also criticized the Department of the Interior and Local Government, Armed Forces, and Philippine National Police for “pressuring” local government units to declare members of the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army (CPP-NPA) as persona non gratae.

“Is the persona-non-grata campaign part of ‘local peace engagements or negotiations and interventions’? How can it advance the attainment of inclusive and sustainable peace?” he asked.

The OPAPP spokesperson meanwhile lauded the local governments that had declared CPP-NPA members as persona non grata.

“By doing this, people now have gathered strength, and are rising up and rejecting the communist terrorist group’s atrocities and twisted ideology. They are showing that their communities have no room for an organization that has only instilled fear, hatred, and violence among the people. Enough is enough,” he said.

Mayor underscored that Ocampo and his “comrades” were the “true and only remaining barrier to enduring peace and sustainable development.”

The NTF ELCAC has also slammed Ocampo for his column, branding him “the greatest scam of the century.”

https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/news/nation/712591/opapp-slams-satur-ocampo-for-opinion-piece-on-localized-peace-talks/story/