MANILA, Philippines — President Rodrigo Duterte has waged war against progressive communists but the revolutionary forces and the people are ready to fight back, Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) founding chair Jose Maria Sison asserted on Saturday.
Sison said CPP’s armed wing, the New People’s Army (NPA), is set to counter the military’s counterinsurgency operations in anticipation of the termination of peace negotiations.
The National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) chief political consultant’s remark came after Duterte dared to wage war against NPA forces.
Duterte said he had studied all the documents and past agreements between the NDFP and previous administrations, and they all indicated the rebels wanted to share power with the government.
“If you read it, it all ends up with power sharing and a coalition government. That is where the direction is,” the President said at the opening of National Science and Technology Week in SMX Convention Center in Davao City, last Friday, July 6.
“I cannot give it to you. Let’s go to war. Let us all go to war … The fighting has lasted 50 years. Now, we’re about to begin another 50 years [of war],” he continued.
But NDFP chief peace negotiator Fidel Agcaoili had denied this.
“For the record, the NDFP has never put forward any demand for a coalition government,” he said in a previous statement.
In Sunday’s statement of the CPP’s information bureau, it also lambasted the president for waging war like a “drug-crazed war freak,” as if he had given peace a chance.
The CPP said that over the past two years, not once did Duterte silence the guns of war.
“You have never ordered your soldiers to relent in their offensives. Peaceful rural barangays are no more with battalions of soldiers occupying their villages. People are gravely suffering under your total war, spuriously named ‘Oplan Kapayapaan’,” it said.
“You ignore their pleas. You drown their cries by raining bombs over their homes and fields. You drive them away from their lands which you and your minions covet,” it added.
Aside from this, the CPP said, the president had repeatedly tripped the peace talks just as these were making headway.
Duterte, for instance, came up with one unacceptable condition after another.
“Now you repeat ad nauseam the lie that the NDFP wants to share power with you. (They do not.) Or that the GRP has been at the losing end of all past agreements,” the CPP pointed out.
Duterte’s “plan to throw 25 years of hard work down the drain,” he “clearly does not want peace,” according to CPP.
“At least, not one that fixes the people’s problems which rouse them to rise up in arms–landlessness, unemployment, very low wages, rising prices, burdensome taxes, corruption and bureaucrats like you making money,” it added.
The CPP also asserted that Duterte’s schemes are bound to fail.
“You think you can get away with your crimes and abuses. The Filipino people will not allow it. Your dream of silencing the people will fail. Your schemes of a dictatorship will fail. You wish to end the people’s armed resistance. You will definitely fail. Like your idol Marcos, you will end up right on top of the trash heap of history,” it stressed.
The government earlier suspended the scheduled resumption of formal talks in Oslo, Norway from June 28 to 30, for three months to supposedly review its position and conduct consultations.
On Thursday, Chief Peace Adviser Jesus Dureza said Duterte’s doors for resuming peace talks with the NDFP “are still open.”
But the CPP dismissed this as an outright lie and a desperate PR stunt to obscure the fact that the GRP has repeatedly terminated the talks and to make it appear that the NDFP is at fault. (davaotoday.com)
