Joma: Duterte best NPA recruiter

MANILA, Philippines — President Duterte is the best recruiter of the New People’s Army (NPA), armed  wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines-National Democratic Front, NDF chief political consultant and CPP founding chairman Jose Ma. Sison said yesterday.

“Duterte is bound to surpass Marcos as the best recruiter and supply officer of the armed revolution, as the unwitting wrecker of his own regime and ruling system and as provider of an ever more fertile ground for the growth of the people’s democratic revolution through people’s war,” Sison said.

In a website post, Sison said compared to Marcos, Duterte does not have as many years left as Marcos had when he imposed fascist dictatorship in 1972. 

“His aberrant speech and behavior reveal the state of his mental and physical health.

His propensity to monopolize political power and bureaucratic loot and his ability to run the reactionary government Mafia style will eventually work against him due to his own personal and class infirmities and, more importantly, due to the systemic crisis and lethal blows from the revolutionary movement and the people,” Sison said.

He said the adverse results of Duterte’s broken promises would soon bear heavily upon him. 

The broad masses of the people are already taking him to task for failing to solve the problem of illegal drugs, for destroying the entire Marawi City and for terminating the peace negotiations with the NDF, he added.

“The negotiating panels of the government and the NDF were poised to hold the fifth round of formal peace talks in Oslo when President Duterte went into a daily series of anti-communist rants from Nov. 18, 2017 onwards and subsequently issued Proclamation 360 to terminate the peace negotiations,” Sison said.

“Ironically, the two negotiating panels were about to make the biggest advance in the peace process by finalizing and initialing the drafts of the general amnesty to release all the political prisoners listed by the NDF,” as well agreements on agrarian and social and economic reforms, he said.

He said obviously Duterte had all along wished to preempt and exclude the NDF from what is now coming to light “as his scheme of fascist dictatorship under the pretense of federalism.”

Duterte had allowed his panel to engage the NDF panel in back channel consultations in October 2017 in Utrecht and in subpanel bilateral meetings in Manila from September to November 2017 to complete the aforesaid drafts for panel-to-panel processing until he abruptly changed his mind and terminated the peace negotiations, he said.

“The somersault followed his extended conversations with US President Trump who supposedly assured him of political and military support for a plan to crack down on the CPP and NPA and finish them off before the end of 2018,” Sison said. 

He said the termination of the peace talks is necessary for Duterte’s fascist regime.

“Although the plan is overambitious and quite impossible to achieve, it is necessary for Duterte to terminate the peace negotiations and slander the CPP and NPA by labeling them as ‘terrorists’ to pave the way for further extension of martial law in Mindanao for the whole year of 2018 and the eventual nationwide expansion of martial law directed against the CPP and NPA,” Sison said.