'Localized' negotiations with rebels a waste of time, CPP says
November 3, 2017 | 6:19am
MANILA, Philippines — The Communist Party of the Philippines on Friday urged the government to return to formal peace talks instead of negotiations with individual commands that it said would be a waste of time.
In a statement, the CPP's Information Bureau said "revolutionary forces under the leadership of the Communist Party of the Philippines and allied with the National Democratic Front of the Philippines reject local peace negotiations being pushed by local bureaucrats and military officials and supported by [President Rodrigo Duterte] himself."
Peace talks — both formal and informal — between the government and the rebels were put on hold in July over the CPP-NPA-NDFP's opposition to martial law in Mindanao and what it said was a continuing "all-out war" against its fighters. Attacks on government forces, including a Presidential Security Group convoy in Cotabato province, also led to Duterte deciding to stop the peace process with the communists.
In September, he dismissed peace talks as a useless expense.
He has since softened his stance slightly.
"I am addressing myself to all the soldiers of the New People’s Army: Just surrender now and lay down your arms," he said in Filipino when he returned from a trip to Japan over the weekend.
The president also expressed support for his daugther Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio's efforts for localized peace talks with the NPA operating in outlying areas of the city.
"Yes. If you all surrender, nothing will really happen [to harm you]. Fifty years in the making, then you are another 50 years. We can talk continuously with the Left," the president said, urging the rebels to stop fighting and killing fellow Filipinos.
The CPP acknowledged Mayor Duterte's creation of the Davao City Peace Committee for talks with NPA units in Davao City and said "similar efforts by the 8th [Infantry Division] in Eastern Visayas have been reported."
The party said, however, that the NPA is under the central leadership of the CPP.
"Duterte’s local peace talks will surely fail in its aim of dividing the revolutionary forces waging a nationwide people’s war. The Duterte regime is wasting time and the people’s money in setting-up these useless local peace committees which will go nowhere and achieve nothing," the party also said.
"[T]he party and all revolutionary forces reiterate its call for the resumption of the fifth round of the NDFP-GRP (Government of the Republic of the Philippines) peace negotiations in order to pursue discussions on the release of all political prisoners and the Comprehensive Agreement on Socio-Economic Reforms " it said, adding local peace talks show a "very shallow appreciation of the profound social problems which are at the root of the raging civil war in the Philippines."
The CPP-NPA-NDFP believe that imperialism, a feudal agricultural system, and "bureaucrat capitalism" — the use of government resources and structures by the ruling class to enrich themselves at the expense of the rest of the people — has kept most of the Philippines poor despite the country being rich in natural resources.
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