DAVAO CITY, Philippines It is President Rodrigo Duterte who spoiled the peace negotiations between the Government of the Philippines and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines.
This was the claim made by Jose Maria Sison, the chief political consultant of the NDFP in a statement released on June 30, Saturday.
Sison said Duterte already terminated the peace negotiations since November 23, 2017, when he issued Presidential Proclamation No. 360 which until now has never been revoked, adding that the President also aborted the June 28-30 resumption of formal peace talks in Oslo.
In my presentation to the Forum of Peace under Siege on June 28, I merely took note of the continuing termination of the peace negotiations by Duterte and gave the estimate that the so-called three-month suspension of back-channel talks for Duterte to review the entire peace process and all previous agreements since 1992 would result in demands by Duterte that would render impossible the resumption of peace negotiations, he pointed out.
Sison branded Duterte as the biggest spoiler of the peace negotiations and will continue to do so as the President repeatedly, in sickening degree, demand that the venue of negotiations should be in Manila under his control, surveillance, manipulation, and duress.
He also hit Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana for openly expressing opposition to the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations, which Sison believed, was made upon the direct dictation of the US.
He misrepresents the level of mutual agreement by the negotiating panels on social and economic reforms as socialism even as these are bourgeois-democratic in character. He also misrepresents the efforts of the NDFP to prevent Duterte from misusing charter change to federalism as a way of establishing a fascist dictatorship. He imagines maliciously that the NDFP is merely wishing to place the GRP under a new coalition government led by the CPP. It is truly impossible to negotiate with a regime that is dominated by pathologically rabid anti-communists, Sison said.
The chief political consultant also expressed the belief that there is no need for the NDFP National Council to make a decision to suspend, cancel or terminate the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations.
The NDFP, he added, should simply allow Duterte to have the distinct dishonor of having sabotaged and terminated these negotiations so many times within a short period since May 2017.
It is enough for the NDFP to take note of the repeated terminations that Duterte has done to sabotage the peace negotiations and frustrate the people´s desire for a just and lasting peace. Inasmuch as Duterte is in danger of being ousted before 2022, the NDFP can look forward to the resumption of peace negotiations and reaffirmation of agreements with a GRP under a new administration, Sison pointed out. (davaotoday.com)
